Some pseudonyms used by Heinlein:
Caleb Saunders
Anson MacDonald
Lyle Monroe
Leslie Keith
A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.
--Robert Anson Heinlein
If you would know a man, observe how he treats a cat.
--(attrib) Robert Anson Heinlein, ?, pg ?
Stupidity is the only true capital crime.
--Robert Anson Heinlein
If you're curious, give it a try and let me know. By mail, not in person.
--Robert Anson Heinlein
Five Rules for success in writing
First: You must write.
Second: You must FINISH what you write.
Third: You must refrain from re-writing except to editorial order.
Fourth: You must place it on the market.
Fifth: You must KEEP it on the market until sold.
--Robert Anson Heinlein
Some people talk better when they breathe vacuum.
--Robert Anson Heinlein
If it can't be expressed in figures it is not science.
--Robert Anson Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein's Specifications for the "Simon-Pure Science Fiction Story"
1: The conditions must be, in some respect, different from here-and-now, although the difference may lie only in an invention made in the course of the story.
2: The new conditions must be an essential part of the story.
3: The problem itself -- the "plot" -- must be a human problem.
4: The human problem must be one which is created by, or indispensably affected by, the new conditions.
5: And lastly, no established fact shall be violated, and, furthermore, when the story requires that a theory contrary to present accepted theory be used, the new theory should be rendered reasonably plausible and it must include and explain established facts as satisfactorily as the one the author saw fit to junk. It may be far-fetched, it may seem fantastic, but it must not be at variance with observed facts, i.e., if you are going to assume that the human race descended from
Martians, then you've got to explain our apparent close relationship to terrestrial anthropoid apes as well.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, attrib to the essay On the Writing of Speculative Fiction, 1947.
[Possibly as originally stated, but more likely to this editor to have been restated by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach. --MN]
[Caveat: According the the source from which this material is extracted, Heinlein added the qualifier to that list that he himself has violated all his own rules.
This under the maxim by Kipling that, "There are nine and sixty ways / Of constructing tribal lays / And every single one of them is right." --MN]
Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception,
--Robert Anson Heinlein
A generation which ignores history has no past -- and no future.
--Robert Anson Heinlein
One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
--Robert Anson Heinlein
Stupidity, if left untreated, is self-correcting.
--Robert Anson Heinlein
Nothing in moderation. Take BIG bites!
--Robert Anson Heinlein
The pseudo-history of the immediate future outlined in the chart you will find in this volume makes it appear that I was seriously attempting prophesy. The appearance is illusory; . . .
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Preface, The Man Who Sold The Moon, pg ?
Details change; the drama continues. Technology races ahead while people remain stubbornly the same.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Preface, The Man Who Sold The Moon, pg ?
There were only three hundred years years from Plymouth Rock to atomic power; there are still more outhouses than flush toilets in the United States, the land of inside plumbing. And the ratio will not have changed much on the day when men first walk the silent face of them Moon. The anomalies of the Power Age are more curious than its wonders.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Preface, The Man Who Sold The Moon, pg ?
Our wildest dreams of the future will be surpassed by what lies in front of us. Come bad, come good, I want to take part in the show as long as possible.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Preface, The Man Who Sold The Moon, pg ?
I could plead the excuse that these stories were never meant to be a definitive history of the future (concerning which I know no more than you do), nor are they installments of a long serial (since each is intended to be entirely independent of all the other). They are just stories, meant to amuse and written to buy groceries.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Revolt In 2100 - Postscript, pg 189
The Stone Pillow [...] It gets its name from the martyrs of the underground, those who rested their heads on pillows of stone -- in or out of prison. These revolutionaries would be in much the same nearly hopeless position that anti-Communists have found themselves in these thirty years past in the U.S.S.R., but the story would have concerned itself with the superiority of the knife to the atom bomb under some circumstances and with the inadvisability of swatting mosquitos with an axe.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Revolt In 2100 - Postscript, pg 190
I am not opposed to tragedy and have written quite a bit of it, but today we can find more than enough of it in the headlines. I don't want to write tragedy just now and I doubt if you want to read it. Perhaps in another and sunnier year we will both feel differently.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Revolt In 2100 - Postscript, pg 190
In any case, I feel that even Caruso, Cleopatra, or Santa Claus could overstay their welcome; it may be that this pseudohistory has already taken more curtain calls than the applause justifies.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Revolt In 2100 - Postscript, pg 191
As for the second notion, the idea that we could lose our freedom by succumbing to a wave of religious hysteria, I am sorry to say that I consider it possible. I hope that is not probable. But there is a latent deep strain of religious fanaticism in this our culture; it is rooted in our history and it has broken out many times in the past. It is with us now; there has been a sharp rise in strongly evangelical sects in this country in recent years, some of which hold beliefs theocratic in the
extreme, anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, and anti-libertarian.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Revolt In 2100 - Postscript, pg 191
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics. This is equally true whether the faith is Communism or Holy Rollerism; indeed it is the bounded duty of the faithful to do so. The custodians of the True Faith cannot logically admit
tolerance of heresy to be a virtue.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Revolt In 2100 - Postscript, pg 191
The country is split up into such a variety of faiths and sects that a degree of uneasy tolerance now exists from expedient compromise; the minorities constitute a majority of opposition against each other.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Revolt In 2100 - Postscript, pg 191
The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in mindless violence has never yet been plumbed.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Revolt In 2100 - Postscript, pg 192
No, I probably never will write the story of Nehemiah Scudder; I dislike him too thoroughly.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Revolt In 2100 - Postscript, pg 192
Science fiction is not prophecy. [...]
Prophesying is what the weatherman does, the race track tipster, the stock market adviser, the fortune-teller who reads palms or gazes into a crystal. Each one is predicting the future -- sometimes exactly, sometimes in vague, veiled, or ambiguous language, sometimes simply with a claim of statistical possibility, but always with claim seriously made of disclosing some piece of the future.
This is not what a science fiction author does.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 7
[reprinted in Expanded Universe, 309]
"Extrapolation" means much the same in fiction writing as it does in mathematics: exploring a trend. [...]
"Speculation" has far more elbowroom than extrapolation; it starts with a "What if?" -- and the new factor thrown in by the what-if may be both wildly improbable and so revolutionary in effect as to throw a sine-curve trend (or a yeast growth trend, or any trend), into something unrecognizable different.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 8
[reprinted in Expanded Universe, 309]
I disclaim any intention of prophesying; I wrote that story for the sole purpose of making money to pay off a mortgage and with the single intention of entertaining the reader.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 9
[The story alluded to was Blowups Happen The reason Robert disclaims any attempt at prophesy is that it was published, in a slightly updated post WWII version, in an anthology entitled The History Of The Future. --MN]
As prophecy the story falls flat on its silly face -- any tenderfoot Scout can pick it to pieces -- but I think it is still entertaining as a story, else it would not be here; I have a business reputation to protect and wish to continue making money. Nor am I ashamed of this motivation. Very little of the great literature of our heritage arose solely from a wish to "create art"; most writing, both great and not-so-great, has as its proximate cause a need for money combined with an
aversion to, or an inability to perform, hard "honest labor." Fiction writing offers a legal and reasonably honest way out of this dilemma.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 9
[The story alluded to here was Blowups Happen. --MN]
However the problems discussed in this story are as fresh today, the issues just as poignant, for the grim reason that we have not reached even an "unsatisfactory" solution to the problem of the Absolute Weapon; we have reached no solution.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 10
[The story alluded to here was "Solution Unsatisfactory." It is reprinted in The Worlds of ~, and a copyright notice in that anthology lists Street & Smith Pubs Inc 1940, which seems
to indicate a sale to John W. Campbell at Astounding, but other than that I do not have any publication history on this work. It is not even mentioned at all, it seems, in Grumbles From The Grave. --MN]
In the twenty-five years that have passed since I wrote that story the world situation has grown much worse. instead of one Absolute Weapon there are now at least five distinct types -- an "Absolute Weapon: being defined as one against which there is no effective defense and which kills indiscriminately over a very wide area. The earliest of the five types, the A-bomb, is now known to be possessed by at least five nations; at least twenty-five other nations have the potential to build them in the next few years.
But there is a possible sixth type. Earlier this year I attended a seminar at one of the nation's new think-factories. One of the questions discussed was whether or not a "Doomsday Bomb" could be built -- a single weapon which could destroy all life of all sorts on this planet; one weapon, not an all-out nuclear holocaust involving hundreds or thousands of ICBMs. No, this was to be a world-wrecker of the sort Dr. E.E. Smith used to use in his interstellar sagas back in the days when S-F magazines had bug-eyed monsters on the cover and were considered lowbrow, childish, fantastic.
The conclusions reached were: Could the Doomsday Machine be built? -- yes, no question about it. What would it cost? -- quite cheap.
A seventh type hardly seems necessary.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 10/11
[The story alluded to is Solution Unsatisfactory, written in 1940. --MN]
"Pandora's Box" was the original title of an article researched and written in 1949 for publication in 1950, the end of the half century. Inscrutable are the ways of editors: it appeared with the title "Where to?" and purported to be a non-fiction prophecy concerning the year 2000 A.D. as seen from 1950. (I agree that science fiction writers should avoid marihuana (sic), prophesy, and time payments -- but I was tempted by a soft rustle.)
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds
of ~, pg 12
[For additional material see Expanded Universe --MN]
Axiom: A "nine days' wonder" is taken as a matter of course on the tenth day.
Axiom: A "common sense" prediction is sure to err on the side of timidity.
Axiom: the more extravagant a prediction sounds the more likely it is to come true.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 20
[reprinted in Expanded Universe, 323]
(see I Will Fear No Evil, 165)
The most important military fact of this century is that there is no way to repel an attack from outer space.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 20
[reprinted in Expanded Universe, 328]
Predictions of gadgets is a parlor trick anyone can learn; but only a fool would attempt to predict details of future history (except as fiction, so labeled); There are too many unknowns and no techniques for integrating them even if they were known.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 20
[reprinted in Expanded Universe, 347]
Even to make predictions about overall trends in technology is now most difficult. In fields where before World War II there was one man working in public, there are now ten, or a hundred, working in secret. There may be six men in the country who have a clear picture of what is going on in science today. There may not be even one.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 22
[reprinted in Expanded Universe, 347]
The greatest crisis facing us is not Russia, not the Atom bomb, not corruption in government, not encroaching hunger, nor the morals of the young. It is a crisis in the organization and accessibility of human knowledge. We own an enormous "encyclopedia" -- which isn't even arranged alphabetically. Our "file cards" are spilled on the floor, nor were they ever in order. The answers we want may be buried somewhere in the heap, but it might take a lifetime to locate two already known facts, place them side by side, and derive a third fact, the one we urgently need.
Call it the crisis of the Librarian.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 23
[reprinted in Expanded Universe, 349]
Fortune-tellers can always be sure of repeat customers by predicting what the customer wants to hear . . . it matters not whether the prediction comes true. Contrariwise, the weatherman is often blamed for bad weather.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 24
[reprinted in Expanded Universe, 349]
In 1900 the cloud on the horizon was no bigger than a man's hand -- but what lay ahead was the Panic of 1907, World War I, the panic following it, the Depression, Fascism, World War II, the Atom Bomb, and Red Russia.
Today the clouds obscure the sky, and the wind that overturns the world is sighing in the distance.
The period immediately ahead will be the roughest, cruelest one in the long, hard history of mankind. It will probably include the worst World War of them all. It might even end with a war with Mars, God save the mark! Even if we are spared that fantastic possibility, it is certain that there will be no security anywhere, save what you dig out of your own inner spirit.
[...]
Our prospects need not dismay you, not if you or your kin were at Bloody Nose Ridge, at Gettysburg -- or trudged across the Plains. You and I are here because we carry the genes of uncountable ancestors who fought -- and won -- against death in all its forms. We're tough. We'll survive. Most of us.
We've lasted through the preliminary bouts; the main event is coming up.
But it's not for sissies.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 24
[reprinted in Expanded Universe, 349/350]
I underestimated (through wishful thinking) the power of human stupidity -- a fault fatal to prophecy.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 27
[reprinted in Expanded Universe, 330]
[In a different locale in the text due to editorial revision. --MN]
I'm an optimist. I have great confidence in Homo sapiens.
We have rough time ahead -- but when didn't we? Thing have always been "tough all over." H-bombs, Communism, race riots, water shortage -- all nasty problems. But not basic problems, merely current ones.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 29
[reprinted in Expanded Universe, 351]
We have three basic and continuing problems: The problem of population explosion; the problem of data explosion; and the problem of government.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 29
[reprinted in Expanded Universe, 351]
Population problems have a horrid way of solving themselves when they are not solved rationally; the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse are always saddled up and ready to ride.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 30
[reprinted in Expanded Universe, 351]
For Man is rarely logical. But I have great confidence in Man, based on his past record. He is mean, ornery, cantankerous, illogical, emotional -- and amazingly hard to kill.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 30
[reprinted in Expanded Universe, 352]
My confidence in our species lies in its past history an is founded quite as much on Man's so-called vices as on his so-called virtues. When the chips are down, quarrelsomeness and selfishness can be as useful to the survival of the human race as is altruism, and pig-headedness can be a trait superior to sweet reasoning. If this were not true, these "vices" would have died out through the early deaths of their hosts, at least a half a million years back.
--Robert Anson Heinlein,
Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 31
[reprinted in Expanded Universe, 352/353]
I have a deep and abiding confidence in Man as he is, imperfect and often unlovable -- plus still greater confidence in his potential. No matter how tough things are, Man copes. He comes up with adequate answers from illogical reasons. But the answers work.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Introduction to The Worlds of ~, pg 31
[reprinted in Expanded Universe, 353]
. . . I turned it down, stating that the rate for my own name was higher than that.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 02 November 1940, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 7
Having touched on my personal policy to that extent, I feel obligated to be more specific, since it concerns you too. I am going up, or out, in this business -- never down. I don't want to write pulp bad enough to slip back into a lower word rate and a hack attitude.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 02 November 1940, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 7/8
I dislike very much to have business relations with a close personal friend. The present condition in which you like and buy everything I write may go on for years. If so -- fine! Everybody is happy. But it would be no pleasure to you to have to reject my stuff, and certainly no pleasure to me. And it can happen at any time -- your editorial policy may change, or my style or approach may change, or I simply may go stale. When it does occur, I want to cut if off short without giving it a
chance to place a strain on our friendship. I don't want it to reach a point where you would view the reception of one my manuscripts with a feeling of, "For Christ's sake, why doesn't he peddle his tripe somewhere else. He knows I hate to turn him down." And I don't want to greet a series of returned manuscripts in my mailbox with a feeling of, "Good God, what does he expect for a cent and a quarter a word? The New Testament?" Nor do I want you taking borderline stories from me
simply because you hate to bounce them.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 02 November 1940, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 9
Right now I know I am a profit-making commercial property, because the cash customers keep saying so in the Analytical Laboratory, but I don't intend to hang on while slipping down into fourth or fifth place.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 02 November 1940, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 9
I have a phoney name [Lyle Monroe] and a phony address, fully divorced from the RAH persona, under which and from which I am trying to peddle the three remaining stinkeroos which are left over from my earliest writing. For such purpose I prefer editors who I do not like. It would tickle me to sell off the shoddy in that fashion. I don't think it dishonest -- they examine what they buy and get what they pay for -- but I'm damned if I'll let my own name even appear on one of their checks.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 14 February 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 10
I will go back to a cent and a quarter a word without murmur, provided it is the highest rate you pay anyone. As long as you pay anyone a cent and a half, I want it. If my stuff starts slipping and is no longer worth top rates, I prefer to quit rather than start the downgrade.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 14 February 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 10
I know this can't go on forever but, so help me, having reached top, in one sense, I'll retire gracefully rather than slide downhill.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 14 February 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 10
He pointed out to me that money did not have to be spent; it could be loaned or given away. (We were both agreed that is should never be saved, except for specific short-term purposes.)
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 06 September 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 12
[The "he" referred to is Robert himself. He was discussing both sides of an argument. --MN]
I want to be able to stop, sit down, and "invite my soul" for an hour, a day, or a week, if I feel the need for it. I don't know yet what my principal task in this world is, if I have one, but I do know that I won't find it through too much hurrying and striving . . .
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 06 September 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 13
Let me pose a rhetorical question: What incentive is there for me to remain a full-time writer of science fiction? At the present time I am the most popular writer for the most popular magazine in the field and command (I believe) the highest word rate. Where is there for me to go but down? I can't go up in this field; there is no place to go . . . Frankly, the strain is wearing on me. I can still write, but it is a terrific grind to try each week to be more clever than I was the week before.
And if I do, to what purpose. First is the highest I can stand; a cent and a half a word is the most I can hope to be paid.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 06 September 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 13
[The cent and a half alluded to was the highest going word rate for Astounding in 1941. --MN]
I will not attempt to pep up my stories by introducing a greater degree of action-adventure. It is not my style.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 06 September 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 13
I have never written a World-Saver story of the usual formula, because I don't believe in them.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 16 September 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 17
So far as I know, every such story has alien intelligence which treat humans as approximate equals, either as friends or as foes. It is assumed that A-I will either be friends, anxious to communicate and trade, or enemies who will fight and kill, or possibly enslave, the human race. There is another and much more humiliating possibility -- alien intelligences so superior to us and so indifferent to us as to be almost unaware of us.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter
dated 16 September 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 18
(But you're the editor! I ain't complaining; I'm expressing an opinion.)
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 16 September 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 18
I suppose it is silly of me to waste time revising and selling these dogs, but this is the last of them, and it is a source of satisfaction to have disposed of all of them.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 30 September 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 22
"By His Bootstraps" is still hack -- a neat trick, sure, but no more than a neat trick. Cotton candy.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 04 October 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 24
I want this story to be high tragedy rather than horse opera -- full of gore and action as a Greek tragedy, but tragedy in the Greek sense. (Necessarily a tragedy, because wisdom required to control genetics wisely is superhuman, and I'm no superman.)
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 16 October 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 25
(see Beyond This Horizon, 26)
[I believe that
the above remark concerns that work given the subject matter and the timing of the following remark which clearly was about that work. (Check the date stamps.) Personally, I do not think of Beyond This Horizon as a Greek Tragedy, but, then, I've never made a study of Greek tragedy. --MN]
Here are the first ten thousand words of the current struggle. Confidentially, it stinks.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 09 November 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 26
[Beyond This Horizon. --MN]
But I am turning out copy and will continue to do so, at about two thousand words a day or more. Those spots on the right margin are my blood, a drop per line.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 09 November 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 26/27
For the past year and a half I have been torn between two opposing points of view -- and the desire to retain as long as possible my own little creature comforts and my own snug little home with the constant company of my wife and the companionship of friends and opposed to that, the desire to volunteer. Now all that is over, I have volunteered and have hereby surrendered my conscience (like a good Catholic) to the keeping of others.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter
dated 09 December 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 28
[One should not assume from the above that Robert was a member of the RC church, or any Catholic branch. That is the sole mention in his correspondence concerning any personal religion, and it is unlikely that it is an indication of his religiosity. Heinlein, to the best of my knowledge, never discussed his personal religious beliefs with anybody. --MN]
[Since I wrote that annotation I did find one
specific mention to Robert's church. However, I refuse to mention it out of respect for his personal policy. --MN]
There has been with me, night and day, a gnawing doubt as to the course I was following. I felt that there was something that I ought to be doing. I rationalized it, not too successfully, by reminding myself that the navy knew where I was, knew my abilities, and had the legal power to call on me if they wanted me. But I felt like a heel.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 09 December 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 29
I am an old crock in many little respects -- half a dozen little chronic ailments, all of which show up at once in physical examination but which I was able to argue them out of. Nevertheless, I was rejected on two counts, as a matter of routine -- the fact that I am an old lunger and that I am nearsighted beyond the limits allowed even for the staff corps. They had no choice but to reject me -- at the time. But my eyes are corrected to 20/20 and I am completely cured of T.B., probably more
sound in that respect than a goodly percentage now on duty who never knew they had it. Sure, I've got scars on my lungs, but what are scars?
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 09 December 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 29
My feelings toward the Japs could be described as a cold fury. I not only want them to be defeated, I want them to be smashed. I want them to be punished at least a hundredfold, their cities burned, their industries smashed, their fleet destroyed, and finally, their sovereignty taken away from them. We have been forced into a course of imperialism. So be it. Germany and Japan are not safe to have around; we are bigger and tougher than they are, I sincerely believe. Let's rule them. We did not
want it that way -- but if somebody has to be boss, I want it to be us. Disarm them and don't turn them loose. We can treat the individual persons decently in an economic sense, but take away their sovereignty.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 09 December 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 29/30
Some of the comments he found fault with are real faults, some as you pointed out derive from a lack of knowledge of the true problems. Some of the real faults seem to me to be inherent in the nature of the military organization and inescapable. The navy is an involved profession; it takes twenty-five years or so to make an admiral -- and older men are not quite as flexible as younger men. I see no easy way to avoid that.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 21
December 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 31
Nevertheless, the brasshats are not quite as opposed to new ideas as the news commentators would have us think. The present method of anti-aircraft fire was invented by an ensign. Admiral King encouraged a Warrant Officer and I to invent a new type of bomb (Note: we weren't successful.) You may remember that one of my story gags was picked up by a junior officer and made standard practice in the fleet before the next issue hit the stands. Nevertheless, there is something about military life
which makes men conservative. I don't know how to beat it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 21 December 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 31
I am not depressed about it but I know my own shortcomings. I am sufficiently brilliant and sufficiently imaginative to realize acutely just how superficial my acquaintance with the world is and to know that I have not the health, ambition, nor years remaining to me to accomplish what I would like to accomplish. Don't discount this as false modesty . . .
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 21 December 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 32
I have just sufficient touch of genius to know that I am not a proper genius -- and I am not much interested in second prize.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 21 December 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 32
A long time ago I learned that it was necessary to my own mental health to insulate myself emotionally from everything I could not help and to restrict my worrying to things I could help.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 21 December 1941, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 32
It is true that a man cannot escape his background -- the best he can do it to try to evaluate it and discount it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 04 January 1942, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 33
So far as I have observed you, you would no more think of going off half-cocked, with insufficient and unverified data, with respect to a matter of science that you would stroll down Broadway in your underwear. But when it comes to matters outside your specialities you are consistently and brilliantly stupid.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 04 January 1942, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 33
The scientific method will not enable you to hold exact opinions on matters in which you lack sufficient data, but it can keep you from being certain of your opinions and make you aware of the value of your data, and to reserve your judgment until you have amplified your data.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 04 January 1942, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 33
It so happens that I am sufficiently hard-headed, tough-minded, and conceited not to be much influenced by your opinions of the high command. I think I know more about the high command than you do. Nevertheless, you were not entitled to take the chance of shaking my confidence, my willingness to fight. And you should guard your talk in the future. It might, firsthand, secondhand, or thirdhand, influence some enlisted man who had not the armoring to his morale that years of indoctrination
gives me.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 04 January 1942, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 34
It is quite evident from the suggestion you made and your answer to my reaction that you have not the slightest understanding of the psychology of a professional military man. I don't know quite how to explain this. It is a heavily emotional matter and goes back to some basic evaluations. Let me put it this way: Take a young boy, before he had been out in the business world. Put him into the naval academy. Tell him year after year that his most valuable possession and practically his only one
is his personal honor. Let him see his classmates cashiered for telling a small and casual lie. Let him see another classmate cashiered for stealing a pair of white silk socks. Tell him that he will never be rich but that he stands a chance of having his name inscribed in Memorial Hall. Entrust him with secrets. Indoctrinate him so that he will consider himself locked up and unable to move simply because his sword has been taken away from him. Feed him on tales of heroism. Line the corridors of
his recitation hall with captured flags. Shucks, why go on with it -- I think you must see what I am driving at. That will produce a naval officer, a man you can depend on to be utterly courageous in the face of personal danger regardless of the sick feeling in his stomach, but it won't produce an advertising man.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 04 January 1942, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 36/37
Naval officers, as a group, are no more temperamentally capable of producing the kind of sensationalistic publicity you suggest than they are of sprouting wings and flying.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 04 January 1942, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 37
A naval officer is much more than a man with a certain body of technical information. He is a man trained to respond in a certain behavior pattern in which "honor" and "service" have been substituted for economic motivation.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 04 January 1942, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 37
Being human, they can make errors of judgment, but no one can judge for them. Obviously -- if you hold a secret, I have no way of judging whether or not you should share it with me.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 04 January 1942, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 39
If you think you're sore and upset, how do you think I feel? Pearl Harbor isn't a point on a floor game to me -- I've been there. The Old Olkie isn't a little wooden model six inches long; she's a person to me. I've sketched her fuel lines down in her bilges. I was turret captain of her number two turret. I have been in her main battery fire control party when her big guns were talking. Damn it, man I've lived in her. And the casualty lists at Oahu are not names in a newspaper to me;
they are my friends, my classmates. The thing hit me with such utter sickening grief as I have not experienced before in my life and has left me with a feeling of a loss of personal honor such as I never expected to experience. For one reason and one only -- because I found myself sitting on a hilltop, in civilian clothes, with no battle station and unable to fight, when it happened.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 04 January 1942, and reprinted in Grumbles
From The Grave, pg 39/40
It took me a week to write it and three weeks to cut it from 12,000 to 6,000 -- but I am beginning to understand the improvement in style that comes from economy of words.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame, in a letter dated 25 October 1946, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 43
I think his conception of a story of the atomic era is inappropriate. We have entered a period of extreme change. I see two major possibilities -- either a disastrous atomic war which will destroy for a long time the present technological structure, followed by a renaissance, the nature of which I am unable to predict, or a period of peace in which technical progress will be so enormously accelerated that only short range predictions can hope to be reasonably accurate.
--Robert Anson
Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame, in a letter dated 16 March 1946, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 47
[The "he" alluded to is an editor; he had turned down Rocket Ship Galileo. --MN]
In doing fiction about the future, I regard myself as a professional prophet -- a man who makes an honest attempt to evaluate the probabilities and to write stories setting forth patterns inherent in those probabilities.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame, in a letter dated 16 March 1946, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 47
If Mr. ----- does not see my concept of the possibilities, he had better write it himself or get a hack writer who is willing to write to another man's plot. That should be easy for him to do and I do not disapprove of such hack work -- but it is almost impossible for me to do it, and I won't do it unless I'm hungry, which I'm not.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame, in a letter dated 16 March 1946, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 47
I work slowly on a novel for the first few chapters only. As soon as I can hear the characters talk, it then becomes a race to see whether I put down their actions fast enough not to miss any of them.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame, in a letter dated 16 March 1946, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 48
. . . I don't want an air credit on that show (much as I appreciate the royalty checks!) and I am reasonably sure that a staid, dignified house like Scribner's will feel the same way. It has the high moral standards of soap opera.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame, in a letter dated 05 January 1951, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 51
[The show in question was Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. --MN]
There is actually no need for you to read this letter at all. It will not inform you on any important point, it will contain nothing calling for action on your part, and it probably will not even entertain you. I may not sent it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame, in a letter dated 04 March 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 52
[The letter was a long complaint concerning the mishandling of one of his manuscripts by Alice Dalgliesh at Scribner's. Since it
was included in Grumbles, I assume it was sent. --MN]
We clowns either make the audience laugh or we don't; if we entertain, we are successes; if we don't we are failures.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame, in a letter dated 04 March 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 52
"Cheap" used in reference to a story, is not a defined evaluation; it is merely a sneer -- usually a sneer at the format from a snob.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame, in a letter dated 04 March 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 54
[The format of the story; this was in reply to Alice Dalgliesh complaining about pulp fiction being cheap writing. --MN]
Speculative fiction (I prefer that term to science fiction) is also concerned with sociology, psychology, esoteric aspects of biology, impact of terrestrial culture on the other cultures we may encounter when we conquer space, etc., without end. However speculative fiction is not fantasy fiction, as it rules out the use of anything as material which violates established science fact, laws of nature, call it what you will, i.e., it must [be] possible to the universe as we know it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame, in a letter dated 04 March 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 55/56
[The Dalgliesh Papers; consisting of two letters, one to Lurton Blassingame and to Alice Dalgliesh herself, and both of which wherein Robert complains about her pseudo-psychoanalysis. The first correspondence on this issue was reprinted on page 54 of Grumbles, of which some content can be found above. See also the annotation for the The Star Beast, 179 --MN]
Lurton, I'm fed up with trying to work for her. She keeps poking her nose into things she doesn't understand and which are my business, not hers. I'm tired of trying to spoon-feed her, I'm tired of trying to educate her diplomatically. From my point of view she should judge my work by these rules and these only: (a) will it amuse and hold the attention of boys? (b) is it grammatical and as literate as my earlier stuff? (c) are the moral attitudes shown by the author and his
protagonists -- not his villains -- such as to make it suitable to place in the hands of minors?
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame, in a letter dated 04 March 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 57
["She" is Alice Dalgliesh, Robert's editor at Scribner's. --MN]
And I don't like her dirty-minded attitude over the Willis business. Willis is one of the closest of my imaginary friends; I loved that little tyke, and her raised eyebrows infuriate me.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame, in a letter dated 04 March 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 58
["She" is Alice Dalgliesh, Robert's editor at Scribner's. --MN]
A "good Freudian" will find sexual connotation in anything -- that's the basis of the theory.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame, in a letter dated 04 March 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 58
Somebody around this controversy does need a psychoanalyst -- and it ain't you and it ain't me and it ain't Willis.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame, in a letter dated 04 March 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 58
It is summed up in the statement that I am opposed to all attempts to licence or restrict the arming of individuals, such as the Sullivan Act of the State of New York. I consider such laws a violation of civil liberty, subversive of democratic political institutions, and self-defeating in their purpose.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Alice Dalgliesh in a letter dated 19 April 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 58
As to such laws being self-defeating, the avowed purpose of such laws as the Sullivan Act is to keep weapons out of the hands of potential criminals. You are surely aware that the Sullivan Act and similar laws have never accomplished anything of the sort? That gangsterism rule New York while this act was already in force? That "Murder, Inc." flourished under this act? Criminals are never materially handicapped by such rules; the only effect is to disarm the peaceful citizen and put him full
at the mercy of the lawless. Such rules look very pretty on paper; in practice they are as foolish and footless as the attempt of the mice to bell the cat.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Alice Dalgliesh in a letter dated 19 April 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 63/64
Such is my thesis, that the licensing of weapons is subversive of liberty and self-defeating in its pious purpose.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Alice Dalgliesh in a letter dated 19 April 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 64
. . . it is fairly evident that you feel that the story is just about as good as it was before. I am sorry to say that I don't think so; maybe it's good but it ain't a Heinlein story; it's been denaturized, had its teeth pulled.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 17 May 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 65
I am sorry to say that I am again having "sex" trouble with Miss Dalgliesh -- [...] The anecdote about the Vermonter who made a pet of a cow, " -- same as you might a good hunting dog -- " Miss Dalgliesh says suggests "certain abnormal sex practices." Well, it doesn't suggest anything to me except that my wife had made a pet out of a horse next door, which was what it was based on -- and I am dead certain it won't suggest anything horrid to my boys and girls. But I gave her a revision --
because we decided that the anecdote was not dirty but was dull.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 08 March 1952, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 73
Since I intentionally desexed them entirely, even to parthenogenesis, I found that a bit thick. I always call a flat cat "it" rather than "he" or "she" and gave the only named one a name with no sex connotation. These things I did because I knew she was hipped on the subject -- but it was useless; she is capable of seeing phallic symbolism in Jack's beanstalk.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 08 March 1952, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 74
I rapped her knuckles most sharply. There are types of behavior I won't tolerate for any amount of money.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 08 March 1952, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 74
["She" was Alice Dalgliesh; her knuckles were rapped over the "Willis Affair". --MN]
Amateur psychoanalysts make me sick! That impressive charlatan, Dr. Freud, has done quite as much harm as Queen Victoria ever did.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 08 March 1952, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 74
By definition "sex" and "libido" may be extended to almost any human behavior -- but I do not agree that there is necessarily anything unhealthy, nor queasily symbolic, in such secondary (sex?) behavior.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Alice Dalgliesh in a letter dated 19 April 1952, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 76
Honest, Alice Dalgliesh, I don't think that you write dirty books. But neither do I -- and lay off my flat cats, will yuh? Your books and your characters are just as vulnerable to the sort of pseudoscientific criticism you have given mine as are mine.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Alice Dalgliesh in a letter dated 19 April 1952, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 77
Look, Freud was not a scientist, he was simply a brilliant charlatan. He did not use scientific methodology, and his theories are largely unsubstantiated and nowadays extremely suspect.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Alice Dalgliesh in a letter dated 19 April 1952, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 77
I concede that, among other damages, Freud and his spectacular theories have helped to make the layman in our maladjusted culture extremely sensitive to sex symbols, real or false, and this situation must be taken into account by a writer. but we shouldn't go overboard in making concessions to this artificial situation, particularly because it is impossible to write any story in such fashion that it will not bring a knowing leer to the face of a "good Freudian."
--Robert Anson Heinlein to
Alice Dalgliesh in a letter dated 19 April 1952, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 77
My books do not cause juvenile delinquency; I consider it irrelevant that horror comics and crime television (may possibly) do so. Obviously, the juvenile deliquency in some New York City public schools is disgraceful and dangerous -- but to tackle the matter by searching for minute flaws in teenage trade books strikes me as silly and as inappropriate as treating cancer with hair tonic.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 08 October 1954, and reprinted in
Grumbles From The Grave, pg 81
Yet this fluff picking goes on with unhumorous zeal.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 08 October 1954, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 81
Mr. Bulman wrote to me that he did not object to the idea of "divorce" for unfortunate children in itself, but that one of characters was "flippant." This epitomizes the nature of the objections; these watchful guardians of youthful morals do not want live characters, they want plaster saints who never do anything naughty and who are always respectful toward all the shibboleths and taboos of our present day, Heaven-ordained tribal customs.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in
a letter dated 08 October 1954, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 82
I feel that I am caught in a squeeze between the really difficult job of being more entertaining than a comic book or a TV show and the impossible task of doing the first while pleasing a bunch of carping elders whose whims and prejudices I am unable to anticipate. I realize that there is no way to get rid of these pipsqueak arbiters of morals and good taste --
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 08 October 1954, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg
82
[This sentiment is probably from whence came my conclusion that there is no rhyme or reason to censorship. Casual attempts I have made to anticipate have been confounded and left me feeling frustrated; so I no longer make such attempts. --MN]
I always followed her advice, although often most reluctantly as it seemed to me that the censoring was often trivial and silly -- like calling a leg a "limb" so as not to shock dear old Aunt Mamie.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 08 October 1954, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 82
I've taken great pride in being a Scribner's author, but that pride is all gone now that I have discovered that they are not proud of me.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 08 October 1954, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 83
I agree that Miss Dalgliesh must sell books and should stay on as good terms with librarians as possible, but it does not strike me as good business to kowtow to everything that any librarian wants.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 25 October 1954, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 85
I necessarily write science fiction by one theory, the theory of extrapolation and change -- but once it reaches the editor (in this case) it is tested by an older theory, the notion that this our culture is essentially perfect and I must not tinker with any part of it which is dear to any possible critic who may see the story.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 17 May 1957, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 92
Instead I have followed my own theory that intelligent youngsters are in fact more interested in weighty matters than their parents usually are.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 10 January 1959, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 96
( [...] I will not let even the ghost of Horace Greely order me to revise my ideas to fit popular prejudice -- I'll hike up the story, but the ideas will remain intact) "Eppur si muove!" I stand by my heresies.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 19 February 1959, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 97
Lurton, for several years now I have been writing just stories, with no eye on the market, and have been writing them with no criterion save the fixed belief that a story which interests me, and the solution of which satisfies me, will interest and satisfy a sufficient percentage of readers to make the story commercially usable.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 10 March 1962, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 102
I could state that the theme of the story is that death is the only destination for all of us and that the only long-range hope for any adult lies in the young -- and that this double realization constitutes growing up, ceasing to be a child, and putting away childish things.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 10 March 1962, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 103
[Podkayne Of Mars. --MN]
I am quite used to being considered too spectacular. My own brother, a colonel of engineers, thought my pre-war stories about the atomic bomb and atomic weapons to be sheer moonshine; he has since flown over Hiroshima and changed his mind.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 01 January 1946, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 106
. . . In the meantime, I am collecting notes on (Forgive me!) the Great American Novel. Yup, Lurton, I have fallen ill of the desire to turn out a "literary" job.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 28 January 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 109
There is no solution to the problem of trying to keep up with the ever-expanding frontier of
science and technology, plus the world in general; I simply do the best I can, falling further behind each year, . . .
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 17 April 1964, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 113
(It's amazing how frank and how acidly funny one can be when one is certain it will never see print until the writer is safely out of reach.)
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 16 September 1973, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 115
[About his plans to write a "tell all" book entitled Grumbles From The Grave; which is not the collection of personal correspondence by that name. That Grumbles From The Grave was never written, and following a
precedent, the title was given to the book that was published under that name. --MN]
. . . more than fifty years of letters, many things I have never discussed -- e.g., the frontline seat I had in the crisis many years back with Japan, before World War II -- a crisis involving a war ultimatum that never got into the news . . .
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 16 September 1973, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 115
[About his plans to write a "tell all" book entitled Grumbles From The Grave; which is not the collection of
personal correspondence by that name. That Grumbles From The Grave was never written, and following a precedent, the title was given to the book that was published under that name. --MN]
. . . aspirant-writers-who-will-never-actually-write . . .
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 16 September 1973, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 117
-- as everyone wants to know how to make money with least effort and almost as many have at least a secret hope of seeing their names in print as "Authors" --
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 16 September 1973, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 117
I could retire very easily now, and Ginny and I could live very comfortably, simply by dispensing with foreign travel, emeralds, and similar unnecessary luxuries --
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 31 March 1959, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 118
I am returning your clipping about the sad state of fiction. It is enough to drive a man back to engineering.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 28 July 1959, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 119
Ginny says they let a second cousin write this contract when they should have used at least a first cousin.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 08 November 1968, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 119
[About the contract concerning Glory Road. --MN]
When in that story, I mention falling 700 feet on the moon in forty seconds and thereby picking up speeds up to 140 miles per hour, and thereafter, killing the speed with a one-second plus burst at five gravities, I know what I am talking about -- I am a mechanical engineer, a ballistician, a student of reaction engines, and an amateur astronomer.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 25 October 1946, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 123
. . . I'm afraid of coaching, of writers' classes, of writers' magazines, of books on how to write. They give me centipede trouble -- you know the yarn about the centipede who was asked how he managed all his feet? He tried to answer, stopped to think about it, and was never able to walk another step.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 16 May 1947, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 123
My notion of a story is an interesting situation in which a human being has to cope with a problem, does so, and thereby changes his personality, character, or evaluations in some measure because the coping has forced him to revise his thinking. How he copes with it I can't plot in advance because that depends on his character, and I don't know what his character is until I get acquainted with him.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 16 May 1947, and
reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 124
-- when I get into the final chapters of a novel it is sometimes impossible to attract my attention.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 31 January 1948, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 125
Ginny says that whenever she finds my shoes in the icebox, she knows I'm coming down with a story.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 08 November 1968, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 126
Outlines never have any reality to me, no vividness
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 31 August 1956, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 126
-- but by the time I am well into the story I am writing with sureness, hearing the characters, seeing their surroundings, and having the same trouble coping with their problems as they have. As you can see, this is not a method
[that] lends itself to formal outline, from which I can promise to derive an acceptable story. But it is the method I have taught myself and it works for me.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 31 August 1956, and reprinted in
Grumbles From The Grave, pg 127
When I am working on a book, any commitment at all other than the book itself is almost unbearable. A dinner date four days away will get between me and the typewriter and make it very hard to work. . . . very hard to keep and hold that out-of-the-world reverie that seems (for me) to almost indispensable to empathic fiction.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 27 August 1953, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 128
I greet this task with the delight with which I change a tire in the rain at night, but it has to be done,...
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 28 March 1957, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 129
Mark Twain invented the time travel story; six years later Wells perfected it and revealed its paradoxes. Between them they left little for latecomers to do. But they are still fun to write.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 14 January 1963, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 131
[Part of a blurb Robert suggested for All You Zombies. --MN]
If an author writes his own blurb, he is caught between the horns of conceit and false modesty.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 14 January 1963, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 131
Actually, I am not studying Arabic very much nor am I writing;
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 17 April 1961, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 136
This dam thing (or damn' thing) I call (with justification) Project Stonehenge; it is the biggest civil engineering feat since the Great Pyramid. The basis of it is boulders, big ones, up to two or three tons each -- and I move them into place with block and tackle, crowbar, pick and shovel, sweat, and clean Boy Scout living. Put a manila sling around a big baby, put one tackle to a tree, another to another tree, take up hard and tight with all my weight on each and lock them -- then pry at the beast with a ninety-pound crowbar of the sort used to move freight cars by hand, gaining an inch at a time.
Then, when at last you have it tilted up, balanced, and ready to fall forward, the sling slips and it falls back where it was. This has been very good for my soul.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 15 May 1961, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 138
After a delay of ca. 5,000 years I have formulated a basic natural law and name it, not for myself, but for the man who first noticed it: Cheop's Law -- No building is ever finished on schedule.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 14 October 1968, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 150
Ginny wins about 60-40: she has a better vocabulary than I have.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 17 March 1961, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 152
[At Scrabble. --MN]
Hell, one college boy even phoned me from West Virginia, wanted to read me the questions over the phone and have me answer them airmail special -- otherwise he was going to flunk his English course. This was while I was working sixteen hours a day to cut that ms. for Putnam's, so I told him to go right ahead and flunk his course because I was not going to stop work against a deadline to meet a commitment I had not assumed.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 17
March 1961, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 153/154
As near as I can find out from inquiries made to other colleagues, I get far more mail than any of my colleagues -- for none of the others seems to find fan mail any problem. (I recall a plaint published by James Blish asking readers to please write to him -- he needed feedback!)
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 13 June 1969, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 157
This is probably the very last of the V-2s and it will be one of the very few unclassified firings for a long time. There is nothing like watching one of the big ones climb for outer space -- it will make a believer out of you, I warrant.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 04 September 1952, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 162
[Entries from This I believe, cross-referenced from Double Star, 162. --MN]
I am not going to talk about religious beliefs but about matters so obvious that it has gone out of style to mention them.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, opening words to This I believe, written for a guest appearance on the Edward R Morrow radio program This I Believe and broadcast circa January 1953, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 163 and 306
Decency is not news. It is buried in the obituaries, but it is a force stronger than crime.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, This I believe, written for a guest appearance on the Edward R Morrow radio program This I Believe and broadcast circa January 1953, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 163 and 306
I am proud to be a human being. I believe that we have come this far by the skin of our teeth. That we always make it by the skin of our teeth, but that we will always make it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, This I believe, written for a guest appearance on the Edward R Morrow radio program This I Believe and broadcast circa January 1953, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 163 and 306
So I am lowering the boom on all of it -- and if this makes me a rude son of a bitch, so be it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 06 May 1964, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 167
[On all the demands on his time for public engagements and meetings with strangers. By this time Heinlein was being "pecked to death by ducks." --MN]
I hereby declare that an author has no responsibility of any sort to the public . . . other than to write stories as well as he knows how.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 06 May 1964, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 167
There are only five things really worth drawing; four of them are pretty girls and the fifth is cats.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 10 April 1964, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 171
The worst thing about this business of predicting technical advance is that there is an almost insuperable tendency to be too conservative.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 13 March 1947, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 172
But I don't intend to dig through my writings and say, "Look, here in Beyond This Horizon I predicted the robot-secretary recording telephone and now it has been patented!" I did -- and it has -- but that doesn't mean anything. The short-term prediction of gimmicks isn't prophecy; it is merely a parlor trick.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 07 November 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 173
The synthesizing prophet has another advantage over the specialist; he knows, from experience and by examining the efforts of other prophets of his type in the past that his "wildest" predictions are more likely to come true than the ones in which he lost his nerve and was cautious. This statement is hard to believe but can checked by comparing past predictions with present facts. (Show me the man who honestly believed in the atom bomb twenty years ago -- but H.G. Wells predicted it in
1911.) (The "wild fantasies" of Jules Verne turned out to be much too conservative.)
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 07 November 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 174
How can one spot a competent synthesizing prophet? Only by his batting average.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 07 November 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 174
Each of them is deviating from the contract as written and in each case to my financial loss. They would not let me deviate from contract if it cost them sizable amounts of money. Doubleday talks as if the 50-50 split on pocketbook were a law of nature. Nuts and nonsense; it is merely an extortion that writers usually have to put with.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 05 July 1953, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 176
[The other house of
"each of them" was Scribner's. --MN]
No, I do not like Doubleday. Okay, they get this few hundred dollars -- but I will never sign another contract with them.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 05 July 1953, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 176
-- each of these publishers is rewriting a contract to suit himself and against my explicit objections . . . and I shall argue no further with them; life is too short. They can keep their grabs and be damned.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 05 July 1953, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 177
Apparently ---- thinks I'm a nice accommodating guy. Please explain to him that I am a son of a bitch.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 15 April 1963, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 178
[The deleted name was that of an editor at Playboy magazine. Robert had had a bit of difficulty with Playboy previously, and that magazine was again attempting to get him to do a piece on the basis of a phone call. The first time resulted in much
difficulty and he flatly refused to fall for that trick a second time. --MN]
Please tell ---- that I am a kindly old gentleman and that the "A" in the middle of my name stands for "Ebenezer Scrooge" and that I am buying a new freezer with my ill-gotten wealth to make room for him.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 27 January 1961, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 178
I could knock off half a dozen tragedies right now easier than I could write one cheerful story.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 04 March 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 180
I'm a fast producer when I'm happy at it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 04 March 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 181
Thanks for the SatRev of Lit -- I am now a lit'rary man, entitled to wear a pipe, a spaniel, and baggy tweeds.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 04 March 1949, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 181
[Saturday Review of Literature, for whom Robert did a review. --MN]
Certainly, I would have preferred Playboy's fancy rates, but it took me exactly one day to write it, so what the hell?
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 05 December 1958, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 181
["It" was All You Zombies. The above is continued to the quote below. --MN]
. . . I hope that I have written in that story the Farthest South in time paradoxes.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 05 December 1958, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 181
["That story" was All You Zombies. For my money, By His Bootstraps was a better piece, although due only to its greater length and thereby better crafting. Otherwise, they are equal to each other in convoluted exploration of time paradoxes. That
quote is continued from the quote above. --MN]
Gold turns out to be a copy messer-upper; there is hardly a paragraph which he has not "improved" -- and I am fit to be tied.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 20 August 1951, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 189
[Gold was the editor at Galaxy. He made minute changes to Robert's manuscript of The Puppet Masters, but in such great number that he completely restyled the entire story. This is not an uncommon problem writers have
with editors, it seems. Refer to the Leon Svirsky Affair in the Asimov quotations file for more on that. --MN]
Look, Lurton, my plots are never novel, I am not an originator of brand-new and wonderful ideas the way H.G. Wells was; my reputation rests almost solely on how I tell a story. . . my individual style. It is almost my entire stock in trade.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 20 August 1951, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 189
Could you talk tough to him, point out that it has been repeatedly adjudicated that mere purchase of the right to publish does not give him the right to change copy under my byline and that he must print as written, or run the risk of a lawsuit?
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 20 August 1951, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 191
I haven't read it yet, but enjoyed it as I wrote.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 09 March 1963, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 198
["It" was Farnham's Freehold. --MN]
"Please tell him that I am anxious to learn what the new book is all about too -- especially the ending."
--A note from Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame passed on by Virginia in a letter dated 28 August 1969, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 206
[I Will Fear No Evil. --MN]
Anything I do always winds up in a story eventually --
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 24 January 1955, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 217
[One can find strong parallels between the around-the-world-tour detailed in Tramp Royale and what some of his characters faced in isolated incidents. --MN]
Las Vegas is sort of an organized nervous breakdown.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 12 April 1959, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 219
[In Friday he called it a "three ring circus with a hangover." --MN]
Ginny visited a negro whorehouse in Jamaica, and behaved with such aplomb and savoir faire that one would think she had spent her whole life in one.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 11 December 1964, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 225
From there we went to New Orleans, with reservations at the St. Charles -- and I was asked for identification as we were checking in... which I refused to give (this is not yet Russia) and we had our bags put back into a cab and went to the Ponchartrain where we wound up in the Mary Martin suite without being asked to produce IDs. I can see why Mary Martin stays in that suite; the Aga Khan would be quite comfortable in it. It was late, we were exhausted, so we had a bite from room service (soft shell crabs Amandine, oysters and bacon en brochette, parfait praline), bathed and so to bed.
The next morning there was a bowl of fruit waiting for us, compliments of the manager, and enclosed with it was a little carton of personalized matches with my name spelled correctly. This was followed by a phone call from the manager asking us to have a drink with him that afternoon. (Heinlein fan? Not at all. He asked me what sort of writing I did.) The moral of this is: Don't stay at hotels that demand IDs.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 12 November
1969, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 227/228
But I refuse to worry about personal aspects of the future. I am convinced in my own mind that the United States is washed up and we will cease to exist inside of ten to fifteen years -- unless we quickly and drastically pull up our socks, . . .
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 26 April 1958, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 241
I wish some of those starry-eyed internationalists would go take a look at the illiterate, unwashed uncivilized billions whose noses they want to count in a "world state"! And also explain to me how to get a world state of "peace with justice" while dictators, both Red and garden variety, control the "votes" of a billion and half out two and a half. Somebody ought to tell them that "politics is the art of the practical." Me maybe.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter
dated 26 April 1958, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 241/242
I won't send him flowers; his doctor has almost certainly forbidden roughage. I would like to mail him a blonde, but there is some silly regulation about livestock.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Peggy Blassingame in a letter dated 03 September 1963, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 243
["He" was Lurton Blassingame, Robert's agent, who was convalescing. --MN]
In the meantime, he should avoid newspapers, authors, publishers, and editors.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Peggy Blassingame in a letter dated 03 September 1963, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 244
["He" was Lurton Blassingame, Robert's agent, who was convalescing. --MN]
Just what I've always needed -- a stuffed owl.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 15 April 1967, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 245
[This was the Heinlein family cliche from Robert's childhood concerning useless gifts, and which was the cause of some hilarity when Virginia brought home and presented to Robert a stuffed owl. The owl was kept in his office at Bonny Doon while they lived there and was named Pallas Athene. --MN]
Of course we knew it had to be when we first got him and I would much rather outlive a pet than have the pet outlive us -- we're much better equipped to stand it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 12 January 1957, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 248
[The pet in this case was Pixie who might have been instrumental in inspiring The Door Into Summer. Robert refers to Pixie as having looked for that door. --MN]
A sad task, but Pixie was so crippled up that I don't think he could have survived another beating -- and I prefer my own cat to a feral one.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 01 March 1953, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 252/253
[On the occasion of having shot a marauding black Tom cat. I consider this brief paragraph to be a summation of Robert's entire sentiment towards criminals in society. --MN]
Quite aside from the time such free work would require, correspondence is the bane of my existence and the major interference with my working time; I've no wish to add to it by writing letters to editors.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 09 January 1968, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 253
[On the matter of consistent solicitations from someone named Spectorsky, an editor at Playboy Magazine, for unpaid reviews by Robert. --MN]
But here is the trouble: I will not under any circumstances write anything unfavorable about any of my colleagues -- and some of the stuff Spec asks me to comment on stinks. This one by Art Clarke is a dilly.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 09 January 1968, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 254
["Spec" was Spectorsky, an editor at Playboy Magazine who consistently tried to get Robert to do unpaid reviews, as well as a number of other
well-known authors. I assume that Art Clarke was Arthur C Clarke, another of the big three of SF: Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov. --MN]
So what should I do, Lurton? Pick only the ones I can honestly praise and ignore the others? Or do as I have been doing and never comment on the work of my colleagues?
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 09 January 1968, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 254
==Begin Stranger In A Strange Land file==
I am writing everyday, but frankly the copy stinks.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 20 June 1952, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 255
When I get through I will either have nothing at all, or I'll have a major novel.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 10 June 1953, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 259
The Man From Mars is an attempt on my part to break loose from a straitjacket, one of my own devising.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 10 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 261
[Renamed from the above working title to Stranger In A Strange Land. --MN]
-- I want to do my own stuff, my own way.
Perhaps I'll flop at it. I don't know. But such success as I have had has come from being original, not from writing "safe" stuff --
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 10 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 261
I have never written "what was being written" -- nor do I want to do so now.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 10 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 262
This story is Cabellesque satire on religion and sex, it is not science fiction by any stretch of the imagination. If I cut out religion and sex, I am very much afraid that I will end with a nonalcoholic martini.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 21 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 262
[About requested changes to Stranger In A Strange Land, which was mistaken by Putnam's for a science fiction work. --MN]
But in addition to a double dozen of minor satirical slants, the two major things which I am attacking are the two biggest, fattest sacred cows of all, the two that every writer is supposed to give at least lip service to: The implicit assumptions of our Western culture concerning religion and sex.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 21 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 263
Concerning religion, our primary Western cultural assumption is the notion of a personal God. You are permitted to argue every aspect of religion but that one. If you do, you are a double-plus ungood crimethinker.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 21 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 263
Concerning sex, our primary Western cultural assumption is that monogamy is the only acceptable pattern.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 21 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 263
A writer is permitted to write endlessly about rape, incest, adultery, and major perversion . . . provided he suggests that all of these things are sinful or at least a social mistake -- and must be paid for, either publicly or in remorse. (The thing the censors had against Lady Chatterly and her lover were not their rather tedious monosyllables, but the fact that they liked adultery -- and got away with it -- and lived happily ever after.)
--Robert Anson
Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 21 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 263
The whole deal is something like Communist "criticism" . . . anything and any comrade may be criticized (at least theoretically) under Communism provided you do not criticize the Marxist assumptions.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 21 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 263
My book says: a personal God is unprovable, most unlikely, and all contemporary theology is superstitious twaddle insulting to a mature mind.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 21 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 264
But atheism and "scientific humanism" are the same sort of piffle in mirror image, and just as repugnant.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 21 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 264
Agnosticism is intellectually more acceptable but only in that it pleads ignorance, utter intellectual bankruptcy, and gives up.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 21 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 264
But I don't offer a solution because there isn't any, not to an intellectually honest man.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 21 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 264
That pantheistic, mystical "Thou art God!" chorus that runs through the book is not offered as a creed but as an existentialist assumption of personal responsibility, devoid of all godding.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 21 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 264
Concerning sex, my book says: sex is a hell of a lot of fun, not shameful in any aspect, and not a bit sacred.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 21 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 264
Monogamy is merely a social pattern useful to certain structures of society -- but it is strictly a pragmatic matter, unconnected with sin . . . and a myriad other patterns are possible and some of them can be, under appropriate circumstances, both more efficient and more happy-making. In fact, monogamy's sole virtue is that it provides a formula defining who has to support the offspring . . . and if another formula takes care of that practical aspect, it is seven to two that it will probably
work better for humans, who usually are unhappy as hell if they try to practise monogamy by the written rules.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 21 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 264/265
But I shan't be surprised if nobody wants it. For the first time in my life I indulged in the luxury of writing without one eye on the taboos, the market, etc. I will be unsurprised and only moderately unhappy if it turns out that the result is unsalable.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 21 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 266
I won't take one-half on signing, one-half on approval of the ms.; they must delay the entire advance until I submit an approved manuscript. It is unfair to them to tie up $1,500 in a story that may not turn out to be publishable. I don't care if this is the practise of the trade and that lots of authors do it; I disagree with the guild on this and think that it is a greedy habit that writers should forgo it they ever expect to be treated like businessmen instead of children.
--Robert
Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 21 October 1960, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 266
. . . my Sex and Jesus book . . .
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 17 March 1961, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 269
==End of Stranger In A Strange Land file==
Did I mention in some other letter that Stanford now offers a course in SF? Apparently SF is beginning to be accepted as a respectable genre -- but I have to keep reminding myself that seeing my name in print is nothing; it is seeing it on a check that counts. It is still the clown business; the object is to entertain the cash customer --
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 23 January 1967, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 275
[Referring to
what he wrote in the letter dated 04 March 1949 and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, 52. --MN]
Lurton, I myself am not the last afraid of corrupting the teenagers of this country; it can't be done. They are far more sophisticated, as a group, than are their parents. They take up in junior high school smoking, drinking, fellatio, cunnilingus, and soixante-neuf, and move on to coition, marijuana, and goof balls during senior high school, then get the Pill and join the New Left when they enter college -- or at the very least are exposed to these things at these ages and sometimes
earlier. Plus LSD and other drugs if they wish. Shock them or corrupt them -- impossible! If they refrain, it is voluntary, not because they haven't been exposed.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 03 February 1967, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 276
I decided years ago never to discuss my own works on a platform [...] A writer looks pretty darn silly "explaining" his stories. He said what had to say in the ms. -- or he should have.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame in a letter dated 17 November 1967, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 276/267
But I am repeatedly amazed at the number of people who claim to be "experts" on me. (One of them even wrote an entire book about me. I have never met him in my life.)
--Robert Anson Heinlein to a Reader in a letter dated 20 January 1972, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 281
[I assume that the book and author in question was Heinlein In Perspective by Alexi Panshin. I don't know for sure however, although from comments made by Spider Robison in Requiem: etc,
and Tributes to the Grand Master, that work is apparently a hatchet job of pseudopsychoanalysis of the sort in which A Dalgliesh engaged. --MN]
I write for the following reasons --
1. To support myself and my family;
2. To entertain my readers;
3. And, if possible, to cause my readers to think.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to a Reader in a letter dated 20 January 1972, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 281
But if a writer does not entertain his readers, all he is producing is paper dirty on one side.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to a Reader in a letter dated 20 January 1972, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 282
But a story that the customers do not enjoy reading is worth nothing.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to a Reader in a letter dated 20 January 1972, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 282
So, when anyone asks me why I write, if it is a quick answer, standing up, I simply say, "For money." Any other short answer is dishonest -- and any writer who forgets that his prime purpose is to to wrangle, say 95 cents out of a customer who need not buy at all simply does not get published. He is not a writer; he just thinks he is.
(Oh, surely, one hears a lot of crap about "art" and "self-expression" and "duty to mankind" -- but when it comes down to the crunch, there your book is, on the newsstands, along with hundreds of others with just as pretty covers -- and the customer does not have to buy.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to a Reader in a letter dated 20 January 1972, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 282
If a writer fails to entertain, he fails to put food on the table --
--Robert Anson Heinlein to a Reader in a letter dated 20 January 1972, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 282
A rational human being does not need answers spoon-fed to him on "faith"; he needs questions to worry over -- serious ones.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to a Reader in a letter dated 20 January 1972, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 284
Starship Troopers is loaded with unanswered questions, too. Many people rejected that book with a cliche -- "fascist," or "militaristic." They can't read or won't read; it is neither. It is a dead serious (but incomplete) inquiry in why men fight. Since men do fight, it is a question well worth the asking.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to a Reader in a letter dated 20 January 1972, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 284
But anyone who takes that book as answers is cheating himself. It is an invitation to think -- not to believe. Anyone who takes it as a licence to screw as he pleases is taking a risk; Mrs. Grundy is not dead.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to a Reader in a letter dated 20 January 1972, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 284
["That book" is Stranger In A Strange Land. --MN]
Certainly "Do as thou wilt is the whole of the law" is correct when looked at properly -- in fact, it is a law of nature, not an injunction, nor a permission. But it is necessary to remember that it applies to everyone -- including lynch mobs.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to a Reader in a letter dated 20 January 1972, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 285
The Universe is what it is, and it never forgives mistakes -- not even ignorant ones.
--Robert Anson Heinlein to a Reader in a letter dated 20 January 1972, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 285
If this universe has any reasonable teleology whatever (a point on which I am unsure), then there is some provision for the Nixies in it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, in an introduction to Tenderfoot In Space, written for the copy submitted to the UCSC Archives, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 26
[The original Nixie was Robert's own dog who was killed by a streetcar in 1912. In the short story, written for Boy's Life Magazine, he emigrated to
Venus with his Boy, Charlie. Tenderfoot In Space takes a surprise twist at the end that makes the story about Nixie instead of about Charlie, but you've got to be paying attention. --MN]
"Why don't they make more science fiction movies?"
The answer to any question starting, "Why don't they -- " is almost always, "Money."
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Shooting Destination Moon, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 117
[Which statement is echoed in To Sail Beyond The Sunset, 282. --MN]
I arrived in Hollywood with no knowledge of motion picture production or costs, no experience in writing screen plays, nothing but a yen to write the first Hollywood picture about the first trip to the Moon.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Shooting Destination Moon, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 117
[Robert regarded Jules Verne highly, and given his interest in space and rocket flight, was probably aware of the two silent films made of Verne's stories about
moon flights. Perhaps they predated Hollywood, weren't made in Hollywood at all, or Robert meant "modern" and realistic Hollywood picture. Before Hollywood, films were largely made in Chicago, but Edison wanted royalties in a manner reminiscent of Microsoft today, so the industry moved to California where they wouldn't have to pay royalties. --MN]
The greatest single production problem is to find someone willing to risk the money. People who have spare millions of dollars do not acquire them by playing angel to science fiction writers with wild ideas. [...]
It was nearly a year from the writing of the screen play until George Pal informed us that he had managed to convince an angel. (How? Hypnosis? Drugs? I'll never know. If I had a million dollars, I would sit on it and shoot the first six science fiction writers who came my way with screen plays.)
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Shooting Destination Moon, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 117
The second biggest hurdle to producing an accurate and convincing science fiction picture is the "Hollywood" frame of mind -- in this case, people in authority who either don't know or don't care about scientific correctness and plausibility. Ignorance can be coped with; when a man asks "What does a rocket have to push against, out there in space?" it is possible to explain. On the other hand, if his approach is, "Nobody has ever been to the Moon; the audience won't know the difference," it
is impossible to explain anything to him; he does not know and does not want to know.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Shooting Destination Moon, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 118
By the time the picture was being shot the entire company -- actors, grips, cameramen, office people -- became imbued with enthusiasm for producing a picture which would be scientifically acceptable as well as a box office success. [...]
As shooting progressed we began to be deluged with visitors of technical background -- guided missile men, astronomers, rocket engineers, aircraft engineers. The company, seeing that their work was being taken seriously by technical specialists, took pride in turning out an authentic job. There were no more remarks of "What difference does it make?"
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Shooting Destination Moon, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 118/119
That sobbing in the background comes from the technical adviser -- yours truly -- who had hoped not only to have authentic pressure suits but had expected to be able to cool the actors under the lights by the expansion of gas from their air bottles. Now they must wear lamb's wool padding and will have no self-contained source of breathing air, a situation roughly equivalent to doing heavy work at noon in desert summer, in a fur coat while wearing a bucket over your head.
Actors are a hardy breed. They did it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Shooting Destination Moon, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 120
The miniature shop made a model which was studied by the director, the art director, and the cameraman, who promptly tore it to bits. It wouldn't do at all; the action could not be photographed, could not even be seen, save by an Arcturian Bug-Eyed Monster with eyes arranged around a spherical 360
[degrees].
So the miniature shop made another model, to suit photographic requirements.
So I tore that one apart. I swore that I wouldn't be found dead around a so called spaceship control room arranged in any such fashion; what are we making? A comic strip?
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Shooting Destination Moon, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 122
A writer -- a fiction writer, I mean; not a screen writer -- is never bothered by such considerations. He can play a dramatic scene inside a barrel quite as well as in Grand Central Station. His mind's eye looks in any direction, at any distance, with no transition troubles and no jerkiness. He can explain anything which is not clear. But in motion pictures the camera has got to see what is going on and must see it in such a fashion that the audience is not even aware of the camera, or
the illusion is lost.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Shooting Destination Moon, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 123
You can figure overhead in a sound stage at about a thousand dollars an hour, so, when in the movie you see the pilot turn his head and speak to someone, then glance down at his instruments, whereupon the camera also glances down to let you see what he is talking about, remember how much time and planning and money it took to let you glance at the instrument board. This will help to show why motion picture theaters sell popcorn to break even -- and why science fiction pictures are not
made every day. Realism is confoundedly expensive.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Shooting Destination Moon, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 123
Realism is compounded of minor details, most of them easy to handle if noticed.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Shooting Destination Moon, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 129
At one point it seemed that all this planning and effort would come to nothing; the powers-that-be decided that the story was too cold and called in a musical comedy writer to liven it up with -- sssh! -- sex. For a time we had a version of the script which included dude ranches, cowboys, guitars and hillbilly songs on the Moon, a trio of female hepsters singing into a mike, interiors of cocktail lounges, and more of the like, combined with pseudoscientific gimmicks which would have puzzled Flash Gordon.
It was never shot. That was the wildest detour on the road to the Moon; the fact that the Luna got back into orbit can be attributed to the calm insistence of Irving Pichel. But it gives one a chilling notion of what we may expect from time to time.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Shooting Destination Moon, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 130
I tried to assess my personal account sheet -- it had cost me eighteen months work, my peace of mind, and almost all of my remaining hair.
Nevertheless, when I saw the "rough cut" of the picture, it seemed to have been worth it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Shooting Destination Moon, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 131
Here in my hand is the manuscript of a speech. If it works out anything like the synopses I have used, this speech will still be left when I get through.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 153
We here, the science fiction fans, are the lunatic fringe! We are the crazy fools who read that kind of stuff -- who read magazines with the outlandish machines and animals on the covers. You leave one around loose in your home and a friend will pick it up. Those who are not fans ask you if you really read that stuff, and from then on they look at you with suspicion.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in
Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 154
"Time-binding." [...] It's a technical term invented by Alfred Korzybski, and it refers to the fact that the human animal lies not only in the present, but also in the past and future.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 154
I like the term Future Fiction that Charlie Hornig gave it. It seems to me a little broader than Science Fiction because most of these stories are concerned with the future -- what will happen.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 154
In taking the future into account, trying to predict what it will be, and trying to make your plans accordingly, you are time-binding. The child-like person lives from day to day. The adult tries to plan for a year or two at least. Statesman try to plan for twenty years or more. There are a few institutions which plan for longer than the lives of men, . . .
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem:
(etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 155
Now, all human beings time-bind to some extent when they try to discover the future. But most human beings -- those who laugh at us for reading science fiction -- time-bind, make their plans, make their predictions, only within the limits of their personal affairs. In that respect, they may try to predict in terms for their entire lifetimes, but they rarely try to predict in terms of the culture in which they live. In fact, most people, as compared with science fiction fans, have no
conception whatsoever of the fact that the culture they live in does change, that it can change. Even though they may believe it with the tops of their minds, they don't believe it way back in the thalamus, in their emotions.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 155
I made use, a while ago, of a quotation I would like to use again, from G.B. Shaw. Referring to Brittanicus in Caesar and Cleopatra, he said, "he is an outlander and a barbarian and he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature." That is what you are up against when you try to get most people to read science fiction. That is why they think you are crazy, because they believe that the customs of their tribe are the laws of nature, immutable and unchanging. They do not
believe in changes.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 156/157
I do not expect my so-called History of the Future to come to pass. I think some of the trends in it may show up, but I do not think that my factual predictions as such are going to come to pass even in their broad outlines.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 156
I have spoken primarily of mechanical changes because they are much easier to show, to point to, than the more subtle sociological changes, cultural changes, changes in our customs. Some of these can be pointed out. I would like to point out one of them right now. The word "syphilis" could not be used in public even as short as fifteen years ago.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.)
Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 157
To that extent, I think that science fiction, even the corniest of it, even the most outlandish of it, no matter how badly it's written, has a distinct therapeutic value because all of it has as its primary postulate that the world does change.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 157
For that reason, I believe we are in a period in which large portions of the human race will be in a condition of, if not insanity, at least un-sanity. We see that over a large portion of the world today. I think we have seen it crawling up on us for a number of years. In 1929 we had the market crash and people jumped out of the window as a result of not being able to predict things which were perfectly obvious, written on the face of the culture, something that would happen.
The Depression came along, and the madhouses filled up again. Other only slightly slap-happy individuals proceeded to be a bit unsane by concocting the most wildly unscientific schemes for making everybody rich by playing musical chairs. Not quite crazy -- they could still find their way around and take street cars and not get lost, but not quite sane either. That can lead, if it goes on long enough, to a condition of mass insanity that none of is going to like.
--Robert Anson Heinlein,
Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 158
. . . we science fictionists . . .
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 158
During a period of racial insanity, mass psychoses, hysteria, manic depression, paranoia, it is possible for man who believes in change to hold on, to arrest his judgment, to go slow, to take a look at the facts, and not be badly hurt.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 158
. . . there's something that we can do to protect ourselves, something that would protect the rest of the human race from the sort of things that are happening to them, and are going to happen to them. It's very simple, and it's right down our alley: the use of the scientific method.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 159
. . . I mean a comparatively simple thing thing by the scientific method: the ability to look at what goes on around you. Listen to what you hear, observe, note facts, delay your judgment, and make your own predictions. That's all there is, really, the scientific method: to be able to distinguish facts from non-facts.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg
159/160
A fact is anything that has happened before this moment, [...] Anything after this moment is a non-fact. Most people can't distinguish between them.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 160
. . . I want to invite your attention to the fact that the science fiction field has been very much stirred up by a semipolitical movement which uses the word "fact" quite extensively. But it uses the world fact with reference to what they are -- what they predict will happen in the future, and that's a non-fact. And any movement, institution, any theory, which does not make a clear and decided distinction between fact and non-fact, cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called a
scientific movement.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 160
I think that the corniest trip published in a science fiction magazine (and some of it isn't too hot, we know that: some of my stuff isn't so hot) beats all of the Anthony Adverses and Gone With The Winds that were ever published, because at least it does include that one distinct human-like attempt to predict the future.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the
Grand Master, pg 160/161
It's very much of a regret to me that I'm not at least twins and preferably triplets, so that I could have time to study the various things that I'm interested in. And I know that a lot of you have felt the same way -- that life is just too -- not too short, but too narrow -- we don't have room enough, time enough, to get around and learn all the things that we want to, and it's almost impossible for us to get a full picture of the world.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at
the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 163
Mathematics is not a science at all -- it's an aspect of symbology, along with the alphabet.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 164
Go out and take a look yourself. Everything else you hear is guff.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 165
Semantics is simply a study of the symbols we use to communicate. General Semantics is an extension of that study to investigate how we evaluate the use of those symbols. Epistomology is the study of how we know what we know.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 166
-- I can't see that science fiction fans are one whit crazier than they were twenty years ago.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 169
By 1980 a solid world government, guaranteeing permanent peace and civil liberty to all, even to citizens of those nations that choose to remain socialistic, a concerted effort by all nations to control population and raise living standards for all. Cancer conquered, and all the diseases of poverty and filth being brought under control as we devote the effort to world public health that we now devote to armaments and war, a thriving colony on the Moon, and a base on Mars, cheap and easy space travel... plenty to eat for everybody -- that is what I would like to predict tonight. How I would love to live in such a world!
The Cold Equations say No.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 170
[This speech was apparently made after the Bay of Pigs incident. The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't until 1962. --MN]
The logic of war today is such that it is most exceedingly unlikely to break out in the middle of a crisis. In this new sort of war the real crisis never stops and the poorest time to start the hot war is in the middle of cooked-up crisis such as the one we are in tonight. The hot war is much more likely to break out -- if it ever does, which is not a likely alternative -- after a period of sweetness and light, of "peaceful coexistence," with no hint of warning.
--Robert Anson Heinlein,
Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 171
[This speech was apparently made after the Bay of Pigs incident. The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't until 1962. --MN]
Well, I've lived a full life -- and the Cold Equations apply to me as much as to anyone. With any luck I'll be the first man on my block to glow in the dark -- but with bad luck I'll have to go the hard way.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 172
[This speech was apparently made after the Bay of Pigs incident. The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't
until 1962. --MN]
The secret of correct prediction is to shun wishful thinking and coldly believe the Cold Equations.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 172
You don't cope with a cancer by forgetting it, and hoping it will go way.
You don't avoid a traffic accident by closing your eyes.
Ninety percent of the possible futures ahead of us fall into two groups, none of them good.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 172
[This speech was apparently made after the Bay of Pigs incident. The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't until 1962. --MN]
This first part, World War III, splits logically into two subdivisions: one in which we win, one in which we lose. Some people like to add a third case here, in which both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are so crippled that neither one wins -- but that is not truly a third situation -- because in that case China wins.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg
173
Death then comes to many of us with that whimper rather than the big bang and, of course, not nearly as quickly. But just as thoroughly. The laddies who liquidated the trouble in the Ukraine, and used tanks on the school boys of Budapest, won't hesitate to liquidate the bourgeois mentality here.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 173
[This speech
was apparently made after the Bay of Pigs incident. The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't until 1962. --MN]
But my own estimate of the average American Joe Blow is such that I expect the long-term casualties if we surrender to be at least as high as the casualties in all-out war. We've been free a long time, we won't take kindly to chains, a lot of us; they will have to liquidate, one way or another, quite a large portion of us before we will be docile.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.)
Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 174
[This speech was apparently made after the Bay of Pigs incident. The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't until 1962. --MN]
The first and most important thing to learn about Communists is that they behave like Communists.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 175
Communism is a religion, an extremely moralistic, and utterly engrossing religion.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 175
The first thing to learn about Communists in order to understand them -- and thereby guess how the frog will jump -- is that Communists are not villains!
Let me repeat it like a radio commercial: Communists are not villains!
They are devout, moral, very moralistic, kind, humane, and utterly convinced -- by their standards! And they live by their standards!
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 175
Communists are nice people, almost all of them. They are sincere, they are true believers -- and they won't be seduced by sirloin steaks. I have been in six communist countries and in eight of the so-called Republics of the Soviet Union -- in much travel over many years. I know many, many communists, know them and like them. Like them? Of all the major peoples on this planet the Russians and the Chinese are the most like us, the ones I like best -- and it is a matter of deep sorrow to me that
these sweet and warm-hearted people should be elected by the logic of history to be our antagonists.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 175
[The reference to sirloin steaks is an allusion to an oft-asked question of Robert concerning the likelyhood of the SovUnion becoming less aggressive as they buy more consumer goods and their standard of living
rises. That question was the raison d'etre for almost the entirety of his speech; for the answer was a resounding, "No." This speech was apparently made after the Bay of Pigs incident. The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't until 1962. --MN]
Know your enemy -- the first law of war.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 176
[Repeating what is probably an ancient axiom of military operations. --MN]
. . . the Chinese have been raised in fortitude for centuries . . . whereas we have been living pretty high off the hog and keep alive our poorest stock. Racially and genetically it may well be an improvement for a third of us to be killed off.
That doesn't mean we have to like it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 177
[This speech was apparently made after the Bay of Pigs incident. The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't until 1962. --MN]
Nobody will live through the extremely rough period ahead of us, a period that probably will see the end of our national history, by getting the jitters, flipping his lid, or being overcome by the horror of it all.
The period ahead of us is guaranteed not to be boring.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 177
[This speech was apparently made after the Bay of Pigs incident. The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't until 1962. --MN]
The worlds of Doc Smith's space epics make the prospect of World War III look like a tea party. Nor was he alone. John Campbell, in his space sagas, always described scenes just as rough -- and so did Jack Williamson. those were terrible and terrifying universes -- yet their characters charged in undismayed, against any odds -- scattering blood over thousands and millions of parsecs.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention,
Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 177
Look, friends, the only possible way to enjoy life is not to be afraid to die. A zest for living requires a willingness to die; you cannot have the first without the second. The '60s and '70s and '80s and '90s can be loaded with the zest for living, high excitement, and gutsy adventure for any truly human person.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg
177
A man and his wife were walking in Swope Park one Sunday, started across those tracks, and she stepped on a switching juncture, got her foot caught in it -- stuck tight.
Nothing to panic about, there were no trains in sight and that line carried only a couple of trains a day.
But she found that she could not pull it out even with her husband's help -- and there was no one else around.
They both worked away at it for several minutes when a stranger came along, a man, and now all three of them strained and pulled.
No luck -- and now they heard a train coming.
Too late to flag it down -- too late to do anything -- save continue to try to get her foot out of there.
Of course both the husband -- and the stranger who had happened along -- could have saved themselves easily.
But they didn't. Neither gave up, both men kept trying and still trying as the train hit them.
The wife and the stranger were killed at once; the husband lasted just long enough to tell what had happened and died before he could be moved.
The woman had no choice. The husband had a choice and acted as a husband should.
But what about the stranger?
No one would have blamed him if he had jumped clear at the last moment at which he could have saved himself. After all, in sober fact, the woman could not be saved -- it was too late. She was not his wife, not his responsibility -- she was a total stranger; we don't know that he ever learned her name.
But he didn't jump back. He was leaning over, pulling this stranger's leg with all his strength when the locomotive hit him. He used the last golden moments of his life, the last effort his muscles would ever make, still trying to save her.
[...] I don't even know the stranger's name. [...] I'll never know anything about him -- except how he chose to spend the last five minutes of his short life . . . and how he elected to die.
But that is really quite a lot and I've thought about it many times since. Why did he do what he did? What did he think about in those last few rushing minutes when the train bore down on them? Or did he think about anything save the great effort he was making? Was he afraid? If he was, what inner resources did he draw on to offset that fear with ultimate courage?
We can't know. All we know is that, with no flags flying, no bands playing, no time to prepare for the ordeal -- he did it.
And the only conclusion I have ever been able to reach is this: This is how a man lives. And this is how a man dies.
[...] This is not a tale about how a man happened to die in Swope Park on a Sunday afternoon back when Taft was President. This is a story for any year about how a man . . . lives.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 178-180
-- and let us note also that atomic weapons are very little use against an underground -- and then let it go at that.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 181
Happiness does not come from sirloin steaks and Cadillacs -- nor does hardship and danger mean unhappiness to those who choose it voluntarily. These are not circumstances under which people commit suicide.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 181
-- unless, of course, you are ground zero of a direct hit, a factor which renders all other considerations academic.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 181
So find out where you stand -- don't tell me, tell yourself.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 183
This is a good time to say a word in praise of one of the greatest minds of this century -- Bertrand, Lord Russell. A mind like a computer, utterly logical. I won't repeat his arguments -- go look them up. Because no one has ever stated the arguments for pacifism and surrender more logically and more cogently.
I can't disagree with him in any way. The man makes sense.
My only difference with him is the total disagreement of starting from a different set of unarguable values. I honor and respect Lord Russell . . . because he knows where he stands and why and has the courage to stare open-eyed at the consequences of his own moral values.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 183
Perhaps this is a good time for me to stop and interpolate a statement on my own behalf. I have been forced to realize that, in the minds of many people -- including some of you here tonight -- I am a dirty war-mongering beast who wants to sprinkle fallout over innocent babes.
By the standards of antagonists I suppose the most I can plead is nolo contendere.
Which is the same as pleading guilty.
Yes, I would rather risk fallout on innocent babies, with chuckly smiles and dimpled knees -- than see the United States of America surrender to this monstrous evil.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 184
[This speech was apparently made after the Bay of Pigs incident. The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't until 1962. --MN]
I happen to think that it is better to risk fallout for a baby than to risk slavery for it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 184
[This speech was apparently made after the Bay of Pigs incident. The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't until 1962. --MN]
I also think there are prices too high to pay to save the United States.
Conscription is one of them. Conscription is slavery -- and I don't think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone -- no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. If a country can't save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say: Let the damned thing go down the drain!
I don't like the suppression of the truth for any reason. I think the word "classified" stinks!
I do not think that a group of people is justified in locking up a human being. If I had my way, all jails and prisons would be torn down, utterly abolished!
I was not born with these opinions and I did not form them lightly. I say these things as a man who has, in the past, marked documents "Confidential" or "Secret," a man who has given orders to conscripts, as a man who has sentenced his fellow man to prison. I don't like any of it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 185
All three of these thing have to do with why I despise Communism -- but I will mention only the factor I despise the most. I hate Communism most for its cold-blooded murder of the truth!
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 185
Under the Communist system it is never possible to get the facts. The truth is dead -- murdered -- and the official version, the pravda, is that which advances the world Communist revolution.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 192
I don't think that the Russians are going to hit us with H-bombs -- unless they do it almost at once, which seems to me most unlikely. H-bombs destroy too much -- and they don't want to ruin this country; they just want to own it. And fallout is too indiscriminate.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 193
If they were loaded for bear with neutron bombs in ICBMs, they might be mightily tempted to quit sparring with us and let us have it with both barrels -- in which case there is little to worry about; a corpse does little worrying.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 192
[This speech was apparently made after the Bay of Pigs incident. The Cuban
Missile Crisis wasn't until 1962. --MN]
There is an even fancier -- and simpler -- type of atomic weapon coming up: The californium bullet, fired in an ordinary rifle, or something much like it and weighing no more -- a bullet of fissionable material that reaches critical mass on impact and goes off as a small A-bomb.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 194
The ultimate weapon was invented in pre-history. It is a kitchen knife in the hands of a determined man -- who is fed up.
Don't ever underrate this weapon. It is far more dangerous than all the ABCWX weapons put together --
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 194
Predictions? Make your own. Pay no attention to the predictions of almost all of the professional scientists; by nature they are very conservative in their predictions and they have almost always been wrong -- on the short side.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 195
If it turns out that we are the only life in the universe, it will be, to me, the most startling thing possible.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 196
But democracy and freedom, pleasant and sweet as they are to those of us who have learned to cherish them -- cherish them so much that we are willing to die for them -- nevertheless are not things essential to human life and progress; these are recent inventions --
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 196
Freedom and democracy we can lose . . . and then regain them in time. Not in your time and mine, probably -- but when the human race needs these factors, we'll use them again.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 196
[This speech was apparently made after the Bay of Pigs incident. The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't until 1962. --MN]
But there is one very important factor which is growing all over this planet along with and as a direct result of this uncomfortable and dangerous century of revolution we are seating out.
Reading and writing!
As of now, more than sixty percent of the human race cannot read or write. But as a direct result of all these revolutions people are learning to read and write who never did before.
Everywhere! It is one of the benefits -- perhaps the only benefit -- of Communism. But don't discount it; it is terribly important.
A man who learns to read and write is half-way to freedom by that one fact.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 196
[This speech was apparently made after the Bay of Pigs incident. The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't until 1962. --MN]
Cinematography is the greatest art medium the human mind has as yet ever developed, the most flexible, the most versatile of all artistic media. With film, plus sound and color and special effects it can do anything that any of the historic media could do -- plus many things utterly impossible for other media.
But it has two drawbacks -- it is usually terribly expensive -- [...] -- and it usually takes hundreds or thousand of people to make one film.
Now this doesn't suit artists.
Especially it does not suit writers who are a bad-tempered breed at best. We shut ourselves up alone to work and snarl at anyone who interrupts us -- especially anyone unfortunate enough to be married to a writer.
So most writers don't want to write for films; it forces them out of their self-imposed solitary confinement and requires them to adjust to real human beings . . . instead of the much more tractable imaginary people who live in their typewriters.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Rio de Janeiro Movie Festival, 1969, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 198
But the first shortcoming of cinema is that "Creativity Is Not Divisible."
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Rio de Janeiro Movie Festival, 1969, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 198
[Robert borrowed that title as one of the themes for his speech from an essay on artistic creation by Irving Pichel, who directed Destination Moon. --MN]
Creativity truly cannot be divided. [...] Creative art is never produced by the committee system. Never.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Rio de Janeiro Movie Festival, 1969, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 199
On Christmas day three months ago Chesley drove sixty miles through a rain storm to have Christmas dinner with us, and we watched Apollo 8 live on television. Sometimes dreams do come true.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Rio de Janeiro Movie Festival, 1969, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 201
[Chesley was Chesley Bonestell who did the painting of the backdrops used in Destination Moon. At the time of the filming, he was the
only person in the world who did such work. --MN]
Spaceships are wonderful but people remain more important than any machine, no matter how big or marvelous.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the Rio de Janeiro Movie Festival, 1969, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 201
Perhaps the most useful thing to the reader of science fiction is that he is not as subject to future shock as other people.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech, Thirty-fourth World Science Fiction Convention, Kansas City, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 208
Speaking of one thing that science fiction is, though, I want to meet the chap who said you could write science fiction without science. [...] Anyone who thinks science fiction can be written without science deserves to go and room with the person who thinks that historical novels can be written without a knowledge of history.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech, Thirty-fourth World Science Fiction Convention, Kansas City, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the
Grand Master, pg 209
People worry about whether or not there is going to be an H-bomb war or an A-bomb war. Certainly there is going to be one -- there's going to be more than one! Don't kid yourselves. There will be wars -- but the human race thrives on trouble. We're built for it -- that's what we're good for.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech, Thirty-fourth World Science Fiction Convention, Kansas City, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 211
The most ridiculous statement I have ever heard is one that was attached to a splinter political party: "Peace and Freedom." You can have peace, or you can have freedom, but you don't get both at once.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech, Thirty-fourth World Science Fiction Convention, Kansas City, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 212
The only way a man can be free is by an utter willingness to fight with the outright viciousness of one of Larry Niven's Kzin.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech, Thirty-fourth World Science Fiction Convention, Kansas City, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 212
The only peace that a man ever gets is the peace of the grave, and sometimes those who fight get it too, . . .
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech, Thirty-fourth World Science Fiction Convention, Kansas City, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 212
-- there was an expression about it at that time: "The cowards never started and the weaklings died along the way." And that is what will happen to the human race with respect to going on out into space.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech, Thirty-fourth World Science Fiction Convention, Kansas City, 1961, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 212
[The expression was from the time that Westport Landing was a launch point for the covered wagons
headed west. --MN]
I have nothing against critics, I just don't think they should be allowed to ride in the front ends of streetcars.
--Robert Anson Heinlein in a letter to Poul Anderson and quoted by him during a tribute to the Grand Master, reprinted in Requiem: (etc.) Tributes to the Grand Master, pg 245
[No date was given for the letter. --MN]
"Don't you believe in statistics?"
"Sure I believe in statistics. But I've noticed that whenever I personally am a statistic I'm always way out at the end of the curve, instead of being comfortable toward the middle."
--Virginia Heinlein to Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), in a discussion about taking an around the world tour, Tramp Royale, pg 4
Luckily I come from a family of pack rats; we were able to dig up a family bible entry, my first grade report card [...], my cradle roll certificate, and a letter addressed to me by name on the occasion of my third birthday. There was also a lock of hair.
The cradle roll certificate had the wrong year on it, so we threw that out, but the other exhibits, in due and leisurely time, produced from the State of Missouri a document which said that my birth had been duly registered at the state capital. I breathed relief; at last I was me. I had attended school, been commissioned in the armed services, held two civil service jobs, married, voted, run for office, drawn a pension, and done all manner of things as a citizen and a flesh-and-blood being
through more than four decades, all without having had any legal existence whatsoever. Now at last this little 4 X 6 slip of paper, issued by a clerk who had never seen me, assured me that I was real and therefore could apply for a passport.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 6
[Since the cradle roll certificate was a piece of childhood memorabilia, it's a sure bet that Robert used the term "thrown out" in its judicial sense; the certificate was thrown out of
court, as it were, so as not to prejudice the proceedings. --MN]
I am not opposed to birth certificates. They are a nuisance only if you do not have one. But I am not impressed by them. There must be thousands (more likely millions) of persons like myself in this country who managed to get born without benefit of statistics, nor do I find it reasonable to penalize a new-born infant for an omission on the part of government.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 6/7
Bribery? No, "Squeeze" -- a bribe is paid to get a man to do something he should not do; "squeeze" is something he demands of you for doing something you are legally entitled to have done anyhow, such as stamping your passport or passing your personal luggage. Most officials do not expect squeeze; those who do can make you miss trains, or worse.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 7/8
While I am in a mood of reminiscent irritation let me state flatly that there is no limit the variety of bureaucratic buffoonery placed in the way of legitimate travelers today and that it is my solemn opinion that none of it is of any use whatever. None of it is efficient enough to stop spies, smuggling, or illegal immigration. But the proof of the uselessness of any particular item of red tape lies in the fact that each procedure required by the laws of Ruritania will be found to be missing from the red tape of Lower Slobbovia, with no equivalent procedure to replace it. Instead, Lower Slobbovia will have a different silly mess of its own. This one impounds your passport, that one requires you to report to the police, this one so help me wants you to file an income tax return for a stay of four days, that one requires that you register your Kodak (but lets you take any pictures at all!), this one wants to know where your grandparents were born before it will let you simply change planes inside their sacred precincts. That one requires a cash deposit to guarantee that you will leave, then requires you to submit a freshman term paper to get it back when you do leave. This one --
But I could go on endlessly. Their name is legion and these steeplechase hazards to travel have in common in their endless variety only that they are obnoxious and they are all useless. Pardon the irritation -- I have been keeping my temper and smiling for the past forty thousand miles and my face is tired.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 8
Visas are of no use, none whatsoever. They are the epitome of functionless red tape, as meaningless as stepping on every crack while walking down a sidewalk. Many countries have abolished them entirely for all or almost all visits; other countries cling to them and make the obtaining of one as complicated and as annoying as removing an impacted wisdom tooth -- South Africa and Indonesia, to cite two horrid cases. The endless questionnaires serve no purpose, since the desired answers are
obvious and the international crook need only resort to cheerful mendacity. The fees are almost too small to constitute worthwhile revenue in view of the overhead -- often there is no fee; it is red tape for the sweet sake of red tape itself.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 10
We visited seven [Latin American] countries: I state the simple truth when I say that not once did we hear a harsh word, never were we scowled at, no one was ever too tired or to busy to be patient and kind to us. Nor is it fair to attribute this continent-wide courtesy to the Yankee Dollar; most of these encounters had nothing at all to do with money.
It seemed to me to be the finest outward expression of true individualism: each man respected himself; this inner respect, his awareness of himself as a unique person, required him to extend to every other human being everywhere and of any economic station a dignified courtesy which recognized tacitly the unique worth of both his fellow human being and himself.
My analysis may be wrong, but the outward fact remains.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 26
I have never understood how globe-trotting columnists can take a quick look at a country and come up with all the answers to all problems, economic, political, and social. I can't possibly do so because I don't know enough history, geography, psychology, economics, science, anthropology, or whatever, nor can I keep up with the endless spate of new facts. Even my own home town confuse me; every time I think I have reached the "facts" I find another layer underneath, like peeling an onion. How can I do justice to a country, a continent, a globe?
Nevertheless, it does not take a biochemist to detect a rotten egg in an omelet.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 26
I shall set down my opinions whether they constitute complete answers or not.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 27
There was the usual queue on the sidewalk outside Antoine's; we did not tarry. I have never eaten at Antoine's and do not intend to do so ever; any restaurateur who lets his patrons stand on the sidewalk instead of providing enough room to sit down is welcome to the suckers he gets -- but I'll be a sucker sitting down, thanks.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 28/29
The dive was grimy but the show was all that it was billed. I mean to say: where else can you see a naked woman rassle with a full-grown leopard thirty-nine inches from your nose and no bars? This act was all that it was represented to be and it struck me as damned dangerous. Sure, she did her strip by having the leopard claw and/or bite her clothes away, just like Lolita and her Doves and that gal who used to do the same act with a parrot. But the thing that got me was that apparently bad
tempered feline practically stepping in my half ounce cuba libre. It made me so nervous I had to sit through the show twice.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 30
The skipper went to sea as a boy, shipping before the mast, and worked his way up through the hawsepipe through all ratings from ordinary seaman to master mariner. This personal saga of the sea is probably passing today, as a consequence of the founding of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. No doubt this transition represents progress, but one thing is sure: the old-style skipper has a knowledge of his ship and the job of every man in it which cannot be learned in a school room.
--Robert
Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 34
[Continued to quotation below. --MN]
Captain Lee kept a very taut ship. There was overt evidence in clean paintwork and well-shined brightwork but the most compelling evidence was negative; the ship had no odor. Almost every ship that sails the sea holds a pervasive, inescapable stink compounded of bilgewater and a dozen other ancient, organic whiffs. In a dirty ship it is almost unbearable; in a clean ship it so slight as to be inoffensive when the weather is calm, the ports open, and the stomach is easy. But one does not expect to find it missing altogether. The Gulf Shipper had none that I could detect.
Later on were were conducted through all parts of the ship, engineroom, holds, lower passages, crew's quarters, galley, lockers, iceboxes -- and I could see why. The ship was clean. Not just reasonably clean, but clean. The Captain inspected the ship each morning from stem to sternpost. When he inspected during our first day at sea I was asleep, with our door closed. He did not knock but noted down that he had not been able to complete his inspection.
He did not simply stick his head in, glance around, and ask us if everything was all right. He came in and tried everything himself -- plumbing valves, porthole dogs, medicine cabinet door, wardrobe doors, drawers. There was a steel chest of drawers, welded to the bulkhead; Captain Lee found that one of the drawers stuck, so he squatted down, took hold with both hands and attempted to make it work.
He is a large man and powerful. With a sound of ripping metal the entire steel chest parted company from the bulkhead and came away in his hands. He looked at it soberly and remarked, "I'll send one of the engineers up to fix that."
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 34/35
Buenaventura, Colombia, is not worse than other ports; for pure villainy it is not in the same league with the racket-infested docksides of New York City. In fact, the purser tells us that Buenaventura is safer than it used to be, as "the officials are no longer hungry." About six months earlier there was a revolution, or rather a military coup d'etat; since then the port officials and the police have been paid regularly. They do not need to steal nor to seek bribes in order to eat.
The notion that a military dictator can produce a better government than an elected regime is obnoxious, but clearly this is an occasion for suspended judgment. Our Latin neighbors move in mysterious way. Where we would use a recall or simply wait for the next general election, they wake el presidente up in the middle of the night, stick a gun in his face and tell him he is through . . . they hardly ever kill him.
I find it necessary to remind myself firmly that the customs of my own tribe are not the laws of nature.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 46/47
[A paraphrase of the words of Julius Caesar about Brittanicus in the George Bernard Shaw play Caesar and Cleopatra. --MN]
But in the cathedral we saw the mummy of Pizarro the Conqueror himself. There he was, in a glass coffin, a little man who could not have been very impressive alive and who must have looked like a child to the giant Inca gods. Yet he and his "thirteen friends" by treachery and deceit and casual murder brought the mighty Inca Empire to ruin.
Now he lies with sunken eyesockets staring sightlessly up, his shriveled, darkened flesh and untidy hair on display, a sight for any tourist with two-bits to tip the attendant monk to let them stare. "Ozymandiaz, King of Kings -- " Was it worth it, pal? Are you happy now? Or are you groaning in hell for your crimes?
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 57
I asked to be shown slums. This was not morbid curiosity. All countries have the homes of the rich, whether they be commissars, counts, or capitalists; their homes are all beautiful, they look pretty much alike everywhere, allowing for climate and architectural styling, and you learn very little about a country from seeing them. I always looked at them for the enjoyment of seeing beautiful things, but you learn more from the slums, which are not enjoyable to see.
--Robert Anson Heinlein
(circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 57
Here is a place to walk softly, to be not hasty in passing judgment; we may not understand all that we see.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 61
[Continued to quotation below. --MN]
I found in traveling around the world that a great many people believed the most arrant nonsense about the United States. In particular, a great many people, apparently well educated and sophisticated, were convinced that the people of the United States were in the grip of terror and that free speech and free press no longer existed here. They believed that the United States was fomenting a third world war and would presently start it, with Armageddon consequences for everyone else, and that the government of the United States smashed without mercy anyone who dared to oppose even by oral protest this headlong rush toward disaster.
These people could "prove" their opinions by quoting any number of Americans and American newspapers and magazines. That they were able to quote such American sources proved just the opposite, namely that we do continue to enjoy free speech even to express arrant nonsense and unpopular opinions, escaped them completely.
The extremely wide scope of free speech and free press in the United States, much wider than that enjoyed anywhere else in the world including all of the British Commonwealth, is not understood elsewhere.
(More free speech and press than in the British Commonwealth? Surely not! Ah, but we do have: our radio is not government owned, we do not place severe restrictions on the importation of printed matter from outside our borders, our libel laws and our limitations on reporting of court procedures are as nothing compared with theirs, our news reporting is the most aggressive in the world.)
The real restrictions against what we can say or print are very nearly limited to only the most blatant of pornography and to classified military secrets. But citizens of other countries neither understand nor believe this; it is too foreign to their own experience. I said to a man in South Africa: "You insist that anyone in the United States who expresses an opinion favorable to Russia or to communism is immediately thrown in jail. How do you reconcile that with the fact that the communist Daily Worker is still published in New York?"
He simply called me a liar.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 61/62
[I don't know, in this day and age, as to whether Canada has less free speech just because our only national radio and television networks are owned by the government. I can't say if there is or ever has been any meddling by government or appointed officials in the running of either or the presentation of information. However, there are cases before the courts of charges of censorship by Canada
Customs, and other incidents indicative of an atmosphere of pro-repression in our government. Plus, of course, there is in our charter of "rights and freedoms," so called, that clause which means: void where prohibited by law. I cannot, of course, speak such matters in the rest of the Commonwealth. --MN]
The interest in Senator McCarthy was enormous; the total lack of understanding of what was really going on was even more enormous. Now I am neither a constituent nor an admirer of the Senator, but I found myself repeatedly in the odd position of trying to explain what he was doing, why it was legal in a free country for him to do it, and how it was impossible for a congressional investigation to cause a "reign of terror" in 160,000,000 people.
My task was made more difficult by the fact that many Americans with other attributes of a horse than horse sense were asserting loudly that McCarthy had indeed created a "reign of terror." Are you terrified? I am not, yet I have in my background much political activity well to the left of Senator McCarthy's position. The worst that Senator McCarthy can do to me is to ask me a lot of questions and demand answers under oath. I may resent some of the questions but I can answer them without taking refuge in the Fifth Amendment; there is no treason in my record.
To call such an investigation a "reign of terror" is to stretch language out of all shape. My notion of a "reign of terror" consists of bandits in the bush who murder and loot in the dark of the night (Indonesia, Malaya, Kenya, elsewhere), jailing the opposition political leaders (Argentina, Spain, etc.), or killing them (anywhere behind the iron-and-bamboo curtain); it does not mean questioning people under the safeguards of the most thorough system for the protection of individual rights this world has ever known. It does not mean a few dozen traitors and/or custard heads taking refuge behind the Fifth Amendment on the sole grounds that to tell the truth would incriminate themselves.
I am not defending McCarthy's thumb-fingered approach nor his sweeping public statements. It has been argued that McCarthy's personality and methods have played into the hands of our enemies and enabled Communism International to make effective propaganda against us. There is some truth to this thesis but, in my opinion, not much. I think that a Senate investigation of communism in the United Senate would have been fought by propaganda just as angry, just as vicious, had the investigation been chairmanned by Thomas Jefferson with Daniel Webster as his chief counsel. The thing that the communists hate is not McCarthy's unlovable personality but the fact that he is daring to attack communism at all.
The other half is that the thing so many foreigners relish about this investigation is not the issue of communism, not the personality of McCarthy, but the fact that it gives an excuse to take a slap at the Fat Boy . . . Uncle Sam -- Us. It is easy to hate the rich and the powerful; those who sneer at us for "McCarthyism" are just as ready to sneer at us for our inside plumbing -- I have heard both sneers combined in one sentence.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp
Royale, pg 62/63
[Also see the entry for Tramp Royale 369. --MN]
In South America, praise be, you can kiss your wife on a crowded downtown sidewalk without causing anyone to stare. You can even kiss another man on both cheeks for that matter, although personally I have never cared for whiskers.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 89
I happen to be very fond of statuary and I have searched the United States from border to border and coast to coast, looking at statues wherever I could find them. It is a very poor crop. Why the richest people in the world who will willingly dig down in their pockets for anything from flood relief for Siam to a 21" TV screen won't pitch in together and buy statues I do not know -- but there it is.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 98
The third impression was the usual one in South America of parks and plazas and monuments and outdoor statuary. I had assumed up until then that the superior beauty of South American cities was the result of age. But Montevideo is a mere youngster, founded in 1726, more than a hundred years after the founding of New York. Where are New York's statues and monuments? Not that thing over the pond at Radio City, surely? And don't mention Grant's Tomb; I've seen Grant's Tomb. They shouldn't
do it to a dead man.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 119/120
We as a people are lavishly hospitable to those who come to us with any faint sort of introduction, granted -- but do we make welcome the stranger who has none of any sort?
Yes, I think we do, provided the stranger and foreigner himself is open to it -- a proviso which applies just as firmly to South America. possible we are a shade more shy about it but not much, not enough to matter. Certainly we are more provincial, less cosmopolitan, than they are, for the same reasons that New Yorkers are so much more provincial than are people in the rest of our country.
But the willingness and friendliness is present everywhere among us. Any foreigner who find America "cold" had better look for the coldness in his own heart.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 126
[Continued to quotation below. --MN]
Is this ready hospitality, then, a characteristic of all people everywhere? Need the frightened boy only go through the gates of the Great City to find inside the "kind hearts and gentle people" that he left behind him in his own village? I was ready once to assert that it was so, but I was wrong. While the trait may be potential in all humans, it is cultural trait and some cultures do not have it. Just to nail this down see Ruth Benedict's frightening description of Dobu culture in her Patterns of Culture. If a Dobu offered a drink to a stranger it would be only for the purpose of poisoning him. Yet the Dobus are genetically precisely the same sort of humans as are those of certain other warm and friendly cultures around them.
But I did not change my mind through reading scientific anthropology; I had it changed for me, through visiting a country later where we were not treated with ordinary civility, much less open-handed hospitality. The experience cured me of the romantic nonsense the people everywhere are just like the folks back home. Some are not.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 126
I myself am very weary of being told by scornful Europeans that we have no culture. In the first place, it simply is not true, even in the snooty sense that the sneer is usually put, as in painting, music, and literature we are lustily productive. But in the widest sense we have made the greatest cultural contribution of any society to date, by demonstrating that 160,000,000 people can live together in peace and freedom. Nothing else in all history even approaches this cultural
accomplishment, and sneers at our "culture" are both laughable and outrageously presumptuous when emanating from a continent that habitually wallows in its own blood. I'll take Coca-Cola, thank you; it may be vulgar, no doubt it is simply impossibly American, it may lack the bouquet of a Continental wine -- but it is not flavored with ancient fratricidal insanities.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 133
These "pukha sahib" laddies who know so much about "how to treat the natives" fail to see the native as an individual. In the Ruys the South African passengers thought it was funny, ridiculous, a bit bad for our face really, for Ticky and I to bother to know the names of the Chinese crew members with whom were came in daily contact. Many of them (I inquired) did not even know the names of their own room stewards -- said names being posted on little cards outside each stateroom door. As for the bar men or deck boys, they would whistle and shout, "Hey, Charlie!"
This attitude applied even more strongly to the Dutch officers. The Dutch once had the worldwide reputation of being the perfect colonials . . . until the Indonesians chucked them out. An engineering officer in the Ruys told me that he did not know the name of single Chinese among his own engineroom watchstanders; he simply knew which one was "Number One" through whom he bossed the others, nor did he know "Number One" by name. I inquired further and found that most of the Dutch officers did not know the names of their own room servants although in some cases they had been waited on by the same Chinese for several voyages.
We sat successively with three Dutch officers in the course of the trip. As is usual aboard ship the same waiters would serve a table meal after meal, day after day. Yet the Dutch officers who sat with us seemed to find it amusingly odd, somehow undignified, and a rather startling exhibition of memory that Ticky and I always knew the names of the waiters.
They failed to notice that we got even better and quicker service than they did, even better than the Captain got.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 154/55
. . . the cross-word puzzle gnu, better known in Africa as wildebeest, which looks as if it had not been able to make up its mind whether to be a horse or a cow, got discouraged and decided to be a mule. It is remarkably untidy in appearance.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 179
Men are much too law-abiding and will put up with nonsense that women know instinctively is wrong. Males receive a sterner discipline in childhood, then when they reach the age when they might break free of it they are usually subjected to a term of military service which leaves them forever pliable in the face of queues, red tape, nonsense form, and protocol for the sake of protocol -- they disprove but they conform.
Not so the female race! They evade or ignore rules and regulations wherever possible without the slightest feeling of guilt, and their husbands are often involuntary and unhappy accessories before and after the fact. Possibly this is a good thing, albeit uncomfortable for the male. Somebody has to strike a blow for freedom before we drown in a sea of red tape.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 194
(see Time Enough For Love,
159 )
It is considered the proper thing these days to gush over peasant and native art, admire the "marvellous" design and the patient workmanship. I cannot go along with this fad; most primitive art is obviously poor art, or kindergarten quality, if judged on its own merits without sentimentality about its origin. As for the patient workmanship, to spend pains on such fiddlin' stuff indicates a person with lots of time on his hands and lacking knowledge of anything better. These are simply stages
that all of our ancestors went through; we should respect them for what they are but not gush over them for what they are not.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 318
The next foreigner to make a disparaging remark about bathtub & plumbing as the vulgar criterion of culture in America in my presence is going to get a swift poke in the eye. Decent bathrooms do not constitute civilized living, but they are as necessary to high civilization as water is to a fish.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 343
I am proud of New York and awed by it. I am glad we built it -- and I hope we never build another one. Like the stegosaurus it has grown too huge for its functions; like the stegosaurus it is bound to become extinct. It is the biggest and juiciest H-bomb target on the globe... too big to decentralize, too big to evacuate, to big to escape being hit.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 360
I will not duck the issue. I have always believed that a man who accepts capital punishment should not be too squeamish to serve his term as hangman. The tail goes with the hide.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 368
The idea of one sovereign world nation, free forever of the peril of war, working together in peace and harmony, is an appealing one. I do wish we could afford it. But the earth and the human race being what they are, we cannot . . . not unless we are willing to accept the logical and inevitable consequences. "One World" means a concept in which the United States is not sovereign, any more than one of our states is truly sovereign. That means that the United States would be outvoted . . . which just as certainly means that they would swarm over us immediately after counting the votes.
That which I am willing to fight for I am not willing to surrender as a result of counting noses in China and India. Therefore, no World State for me. It's a trap.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 368/369
Envy and hate are the inevitable concomitants of wealth and power; we have been uneasily aware of this and have tried to curry favor wherever we could. But it is not possible; we are hated not for our behavior but for what we are -- and they are not.
England, in the days of her strength, paid no attention to what other peoples thought of her; she acted in her own best interests as she conceived them to be and ignored world opinion. We should learn from our predecessor at least part of this lesson: never let a decision be swayed by what the neighbors will think, for they will gossip about us whatever we do. Let us be honest and brave -- but not politic.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 369
[Also see the
entry for Tramp Royale 62/63. --MN]
We are not liked, we have few friends; therefore we should quit being afraid, stand up and assert ourselves. The only friends we will lose thereby are those we never had.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 370
If we are to die as a nation, let us die proudly, with neither head in sand nor led around by the nose, but calmly aware of our peril and fighting it with our utmost. There can be no safe course for us, but, if we deserve to win, we are more likely to win.
But let us not be afraid, not even of our friends.
--Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, pg 370
Perhaps the warmest pleasure in life is the knowledge that one has no enemies. The easiest way to achieve this is by outliving them. No action is necessary; time wounds all heels.
In this peaceful crusade I have been surprisingly successful; most of those rascals are dead . . . and three of the survivors are in very poor health. The seems to indicate that by late 1984 I won't have an enemy anywhere in the world.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Foreword, Expanded Universe, pg 2
The writing business is not such as to invoke amusing memoirs [...]. A writer spends his professional time in solitary confinement, refusing to accept telephone calls and declining to see visitors, surrounded by a dreary forest of reference books and somewhat-organized papers. The high point of his day is the breathless excitement of waiting for the postman. (The low point is usually immediately thereafter.)
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Foreword, Expanded Universe, pg 3
I could write entertaining memoirs about things I did when not writing. I shan't do so because a) I hope those incidents have been forgotten, or b) I hope that any not forgotten are covered by the statute of limitations.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Foreword, Expanded Universe, pg 3
The fiction is plainly marked fiction; the nonfiction is as truthful as I can make it -- and here and there, tucked into space that would otherwise be blank are anecdotes and trivia ranging from edifying to dangerous.
Each copy is guaranteed -- or double your money back -- to be printed on genuine paper of enough pages to hold the covers apart.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Foreword, Expanded Universe, pg 3
For any wordsmith the most valuable word in the English language is that short, ugly, Anglo-Saxon monosyllable: No!!! It is one of the peculiarities in the attitude of the public toward the writing profession that a person who would never expect a free ride from a taxi driver, or free groceries from a market, of free gilkwoks from gilkwok dealer, will without the slightest embarrassment ask a professional writer for free gifts of his stock in trade.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded
Universe (story Foreword), pg 28
I do not intend ever again to try to update a story to make it fit a new art. Such updating can't save a poor story and isn't necessary for a good story. All of H.G. Wells' SF stories are hopelessly dated . . . and they remain the best, the most gripping science fiction stories to be found anywhere.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 34
Yes, radiation is hazardous BUT --
RADIATION EXPOSURE
Half a mile from Three Mile Island during the flap ........................83 millirems At the power plant ........................ 1,100 millirems During heart catheterization for angiogram ........................ 45,000 millirems -- which I underwent 18 months ago. I feel fine.
I had always planned to quit the writing business as soon as that mortgage was paid off. I had never had any literary ambitions, no training for it, no interest in it -- backed into it by accident and stuck with it to pay off debt, I being always firmly resolved to quit the silly business once I had my chart squared away.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 92
[The chart being referred to is a nautical chart, not the Future History chart as one might
suppose. That did not yet then exist. --MN]
("Honest Work" -- a euphemism for underpaid bodily exertion, done standing up or on your knees, often in bad weather or other nasty circumstances, and frequently involving shovels, picks, hoes, assembly lines, tractors and unsympathetic supervisors. It has never appealed to me.)
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 92
Writing Sixth Column was a job I sweated over. I had to reslant it to remove racist aspects of the original story line. And I didn't really believe the pseudoscientific rationale of Campbell's three spectra -- so I worked especially hard to make it sound realistic.
It worked out all right. The check for the serial, plus 35 [cents] in cash, bought me that new car . . . and the book editions continue to sell and sell and sell, and have earned more than forty times as much as I was paid for the serial. So it was a financial success . . . but I do not consider it to be an artistic success.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 93
[Somebody must if it keeps selling so well. --MN]
There is little satisfaction in having called the turn forty years ago; being a real-life Cassandra is not happy-making.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 95
(The general public is just as dangerously ignorant as to the significance of atomic weapons today, 1979, as in 1945 -- but in different ways. In 1945 we were smugly ignorant; in 1979 we have the Pollyannas, and the Ostriches, and the Jingoists who think we can "win" a nuclear war, and the group -- a majority? -- who regard World War III as of no importance compared with inflation, gasoline rationing, forced school-busing, or you name it. There is much excuse for the ignorance of 1979.
Ignorance today can be charged only to stupidity and laziness -- both capital offenses.)
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 145
I wrote nine articles intended to shed light on the post-Hiroshima age, and I have never worked harder on any writing, researched the background more thoroughly, tried harder to make the (grim and horrid) message entertaining and readable. I offered them to commercial markets, not to make money, but because the only propaganda that stands any chance of influencing people is packaged so attractively that editors will buy in the belief that the cash customers will be entertained by it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe, (story Foreword), pg 145
I wish that I could say that thirty-three years of "peace" (i.e., no A- or H- or C- or N- or X- bombs dropped) indicates that we really have nothing to fear from such weapons, because the human race has sense enough not to commit suicide. But I am sorry to say that the situation is even more dangerous, even less stable, than it was in 1946.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe, (story Foreword), pg 145
Was I really so naif that I thought that I could change the course of history this way? No, not really. But, damn it, I had to try!
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 147
The "secret" of the atomic bomb cannot be kept, the experts have told us repeatedly, for the "secret" is simply engineering know-how which can be developed by any industrial nation.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 149
Belgium and Canada have the greatest known deposits of uranium. Both are small but both possess science and skill in abundance. Potentially they are more powerful than any of the so-called Big Five, more powerful than the United States or Russia. Will they stand outside indefinitely, hat in hand, while the "Big Five" determine the fate of the human race? The developments of atomic weapons and of rocketry are analogous to the development of the revolver in individual affairs -- it has made the
little ones and the big ones all the same size. some fine day some little nation may decided she is tired of having us around, give us one twenty minute treatment with atomic rocket bombs, and accept our capitulation.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 149
[In saying that Canada is small, Heinlein was speaking in terms of threat assessment. Although larger in land area, our population is still one tenth of that of the U.S.,
with, no doubt, the same proportion in industrial capacity. However, in terms of engineering R&D, we are easily the equal of the U.S. Study the development of the Avro Arrow jet fighter if you don't believe me. --MN]
Our present conduct breeds fear and distrust in the hearts of men all over the globe. No matter how peaceful and good hearted we think ourselves to be, two facts insure that we will be hated by many. We have the Bomb -- it is like a loaded revolver pointed that heads of all men. Oh, we won't pull the trigger! Nevertheless, do you suppose they love us for it?
Our other unforgivable sin is being rich while they are poor. Never mind our rationalizations -- they see our wasteful luxury while much of the globe starves. Hungry men do not reason calmly.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 149/150
[A point with which I can agree from experience. When you have no job, and no prospects visible, it is a strong temptation and awfully easy to blame immigrants and the rich. --MN]
Teddy Roosevelt advised us to "Speak softy but carry a big stick."
It is a tempting doctrine, but the great-hearted Teddy died long before Hiroshima; his day was the day of the charge up San Juan Hill.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 151
[Continued to quotation below]
A hundred obsolete bombs could destroy the United States -- if the enemy struck first.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 151
[Continued to quotation below]
Our super bombs would not save us, unless were willing to strike first, without declaring war.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 151
[Continued to quotation below]
If two men are locked in a basement, one armed with a 50-calibre machine gun, the other with an 18th century ball-and-powder pistol, victory goes to the man who shoots firsts, not to the one with the better weapon. That is the logic of atomics and now is the time to learn it by heart.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 151/152
[Continued to quotation below]
Agreements to "outlaw" atomic weapons? Swell! Remember the Kellog Pact? It "outlawed" war.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 152
[Continued to quotation below]
An efficient intelligence system -- Fine! But no answer in itself. The British intelligence was quite efficient before this war. Mr. Chamberlain's desk was piled high with intelligence reports which showed that Munich need never have happened. This has since been confirmed by German General Staff officers. But Mr. Chamberlain did not read the reports. Intelligence reports are useful only to the intelligent.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in
Expanded Universe, pg 151
Whatever digging in we do, be sure we do it so secretly that the enemy will never suspect, lest he drop an earthquake type atomic bomb somewhere nearby and bury all hands. Let us be certain, too, that he does not introduce a small atomic bomb inside the underground works, disguised as a candy vending machine, a lunch pail, or a fire extinguisher. The age of atomics is a field day for saboteurs; underground works could be colossal death traps.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the
United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 153
[Continued to quotation below]
No one wants this new war, no sane men anywhere. Yet we are preparing for it and a majority, by recent Gallup polls, believe it will come. We have seen the diplomats and prime ministers and presidents and foreign affairs committees and state departments manage to get things messed up in the past; from where we sit it looks as if they were hell-bent on messing them up again. We hear the rumble of the not-so-distant drum.
What we want, we little men everywhere, is planetary organization so strong that it can enforce peace, forbid national armaments, atomic or otherwise, and in general police the globe so that a decent man can raise his kids and his dog and smoke his pipe free from worry of sudden death. But we see the same old messing around with half-measures.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 153
If things go from bad to worse and we have to fight a war, can we prepare to win it? First let us try to grasp what kind of a war it will be. Look at LIFE, Nov 19, 1945, page 27: THE 36-HOUR WAR: Arnold Report Hints at the Catastrophe of the Next Great Conflict. The first picture shows Washington D.C. being destroyed by an atomic rocket bomb. The text and pictures go on to show 13 U.S. cities being destroyed the same way, enemy airborne troops attempting to occupy, the U.S. striking back with its own rockets from underground emplacements, and eventually winning -- at a cost of 13 cities and at least 10,000,000 American lives.
Horrible as the picture is, it is much too optimistic.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 153/154
It is not safe to assume that the enemy will be either faint-hearted or foolish.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 154
Atomic rocket warfare has still another drawback -- it is curiously anonymous. We might think we knew who had attacked us but be entirely mistaken.
You can think of at least three nations which dislike both us and Russia. What better joke for them than to select a time when suspicion has been whipped up between the two giants to lob just a few atomic rockets from a ship in the North Atlantic, or from a secret emplacement in the frozen north of Greenland -- half at us, half at Russia, and with the attack in each case apparently coming from the other, and then sit back while we destroyed each other!
A fine joke! You would die laughing.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 154
Washington is the prime military target target on earth today for it is the center of the nervous system of the nation that now has the Bomb. [...] Your congressman has the most dangerous job in the world today. You may live through World War III -- he can't. Make yours realize this: he may straighten up and fly right.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 155
The Hiroshima bomb was the gentlest, least destructive atomic bomb ever likely to be loosed.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 157
Los Angeles is a modern miracle, an enormous city kept alive in a desert by a complex and vulnerable concatenation of technical expedients. The first three colonies established there by the Spaniards starved to death to the last man, woman, and child. If the fragile structure of that city were disrupted by a single atomic bomb, those who survived the blast would in a few short days be reduced to a starving, thirst-crazed mob; ready for murder and cannibalism.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The
Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 157/158
There are only three real alternative open to us: One, to form a truly sovereign super state to police the globe; two, to prepare realistically for World War III in which case dispersion, real and thorough dispersion, is utterly necessary, or, third, to sit here, fat, dumb, and happy, wallowing in our luxuries, until the next Hitler annihilates us!
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 159
I dislike the prospect quite as much as you do, but I dislike still more the idea of being atomized, or of being served up as a roast by my starving neighbors.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 159
Nothing less than force and police organization will drive the peasants off the slopes of Vesuvius. The bones of Pompeii and Herculaneum testify to that.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 161
[On the topic of enforcing a policy of dispersion to defray the effects of an atomic attack on the population and infrastructure of the U.S. It is just as applicable to any situation requiring the evacuation of large numbers of
citizens. Although not included, Heinlein cited the round up and internment of Japanese-Americans. Also, compare the entry for page 166. --MN]
Look at the facts! Go to your public library and read the solemn statements of the men who built the atomic bomb. Do not let yourself be seduced into a false serenity by men who do not understand that the old world is dead. Regularly, in the past, our State Department has bungled us into wars and with equal regularity our military establishment has been unprepared for them. Then the lives and the strength of the common people have bought for them a victory.
Now comes a war which cannot be won after such mistakes.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 162
If we are to die, let us die like men, eyes open, aware of our peril and striving to cope with it -- not as fat and fatuous fools, smug in the belief that the military men and the diplomats have the whole thing under control.
"It is later than you think."
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Last Days of the United States, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 162
Perhaps we had better justify the assumption of complete breakdown in government. It might not happen, but if the new Hitler has sense enough to write Mein Kampf, or even to read it as a textbook, he will do his very best to destroy and demoralize us by destroying our government -- and his best could be quite efficient. If he wants to achieve political breakdown in his victim, Washington, D.C., will be his prime target, the forty-eight state capitals his secondary targets, and
communications centers such as Kansas city his tertiary targets. The results should be roughly comparable to the effect on a man's organization when his head is chopped off.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, How To Be A Survivor, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 164/165
Now as to methods -- there is just one known way to avoid being killed by an atomic bomb. The formula is very simple:
Don't be there when it goes off.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, How To Be A Survivor, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 165
([...] The pre-War refugees from Nazi German could not "afford" to flee, either, but events proved the wisdom of doing so. There is an old Chinese adage, "In the course of a long life a wise man will be prepared to abandon his baggage several times." It has never been more true than today.)
--Robert Anson Heinlein, How To Be A Survivor, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 166
[Cf the entry and annotation for page 161. --MN]
It does not take any special courage or skill to accept the death that moves like lightning. You won't even have the long walk the steers have to make to get from the stockyard pens to the slaughter-house.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, How To Be A Survivor, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 168/169
To have canned goods -- and have it known by anyone outside your own household -- is to invite assassination. If you do not believe that a man will commit murder for one can of tomatoes, then you have never been hungry.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, How To Be A Survivor, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 172
A deer or a man should be about the limit of your list of targets ... a deer when you need meat; a man when running or hiding is not enough.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, How To Be A Survivor, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 172
It has been proved time and again, by the Fighting French, the recalcitrant Irish, the deathless Poles, yes and by our own Apache and Yaqui Indians, that you cannot conquer a free man; you can only kill him.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, How To Be A Survivor, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 173
Since we have every reason to expect a sudden rain of death from the sky sometime in the next few years, as a result of happy combination of science of atomics and the art of rocketry, it behooves the Pollyanna Philosopher to add up the advantages to be derived from the blasting of your apartment, row house, or suburban cottage.
It ain't all bad, chum. While you are squatting in front of your cave, trying to roast a rabbit with one hand while scratching your lice-infested hide with the other, there will be many cheerful things to think about, the assets of destruction, rather than torturing your mind with thoughts of the good old, easy days of taxis and tabloids and Charlie's Bar and Grill.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Pie From The Sky, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 175
[A satirical look at the other kind of
fallout. -- MN]
A few of the handy little plutonium pills dropped from the sky will end the senseless process of running for the bus to go to work to make the money to buy the food to get the strength to run for the bus.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Pie From The Sky, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 176
[A satirical look at the other kind of fallout. --MN]
The resumption of the coming-out party in the United States, with its attendant, incredibly callous, waste, at the very time that Europe starves, is a scandal to the jay birds. A few atom bombs would be no more than a fumigation of this imbecilic evil.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Pie From The Sky, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 177
[A satirical look at the other kind of fallout. --MN]
There is actually nothing to prevent American women from being able, adult, useful citizens, and many of them are. But our society is so rigged that a worthless female can make a racket of it --
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Pie From The Sky, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 177/178
[A satirical look at the other kind of fallout. --MN]
I am sure I shall not resign myself to death simply because Joe Chucklehead points out that atomization is quick and easy. Even if that were good I would not like it. Furthermore, it is not true. Death comes fast at the center of the blast; around the edges is a big area of the fatal burn and the slow death, with plenty of time to reconsider the disadvantages of chuckleheadness in the atomic age before you give up the ghost.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Pie From The Sky, reprinted in Expanded
Universe, pg 179/180
[A satirical look at the other kind of fallout. --MN]
[The fatal burn here more likely to be caused by radiation poisoning, not by the flash of the burst. Incineration is likely only if you are fairly close to ground zero and exposed to the flash. Of course, some of the Hiroshima victims did suffer from eventually fatal second and third degree burning over large portions of their bodies. Pleasant dreams. --MN]
I sold it to Scribner's and thereby started a sequence; one boys' book each year timed for the Christmas trade. This lasted twelve years and was a very strange relationship, as my editor disliked science fiction, disliked me (a sentiment I learned to reciprocate), and kept me on for the sole reason that my books sold so well they kept her department out of the red -- her words. Eventually she bounced one with the suggestion that I shelve it for a year and then rewrite it.
But by bouncing it she broke the chain of options. Instead of shelving it, I took it across the street . . . and won a Hugo for it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 207
[The book was Rocket Ship Galileo, that editor was Alice Dalgliesh. See the material from Grumbles. --MN]
[...] Free men. Off-hand it appears to be a routine post-Holocaust story, and the details -- idioms, place names, etc. -- justify that assumption. In fact, it is any conquered nation in any century.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 207
(Gee Whiz and Gosh wollickers! -- space warps and FTL are science fiction but therapy and psychology are not. I must be in the wrong church.)
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 237
[Even many SF fans seem to hold the conviction that SF can mean only fiction developed around the hard sciences. Chalk it up to canalized thinking. --MN]
In 1960 in Moscow Mrs. Heinlein and I had as Intourist courier a sweet child name Ludmilla -- 23, unmarried, living with her father, mother, brother, and her sisters. She told us that her ambition in life was for her family not to have to share a bathroom with another family.
The next aesthete who sneers at our American "plumbing culture" is my presence I intend to cut into small pieces and flush him down the W.C. he despises.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 244
[It's almost a certainty that the above mentioned Ludmilla was the template for Manny's daughter who was killed in battle in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. The Moscow housing shortage became the theme of the short story A Bathroom Of Her Own. The above
quote is extracted from the forward for that story. --MN]
. . . there was a tremendous flap over Soviet medium range missiles in Cuba. Then they were removed -- or so we were told -- and the flap died out. Why? Why both ways? For years we have had Soviet submarines on both coasts; are they armed with slingshots? Or powder puffs?
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 267
Deus Volent, I may someday collect my Boy Scout stories as one volume just as I would like to do with the Puddin' stories.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 276
[God was not willing, alas. One Puddin' story is reprinted in Expanded Universe, another two in Requiem: New Collected Works, etc. Scouting was also a subplot in Farmer In The Sky and, to some degree, in Between Planets. --MN]
. . . I have a business reputation to protect and wish to continue making money. Nor am I ashamed of this motivation. Very little of the great literature of our heritage arose solely from a wish to "create art"; most writing, both great and not-so-great, has as its proximate cause a need for money combined with an aversion to, or an inability to perform, hard "honest labor." Fiction writing offers a legal and reasonably honest way out of this dilemma.
--Robert Anson
Heinlein, Pandora's Box, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 311 (For a definition of "honest work" see Expanded Universe (story Foreword), 92. --MN]
[continued to quote below]
A science fiction author may have, and often does have, other motivations in addition to pursuit of profit. He may wish to create "art for art's sake," he may want to warn the world against a course he feels to be disastrous [...], he may wish to instruct, or uplift, or even to dazzle. But the science fiction writer -- any fiction writer -- must keep entertainment consciously in mind as his prime purpose ... or he may find himself back dragging that old cotton sack.
--Robert
Anson Heinlein, Pandora's Box, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 311
Authors who wish to stay in the business listen most carefully to editors' suggestions, even when they think an editor has been out in the sun too long without a hat; . . .
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Pandora's Box, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 314
Except for tea leaves and other magical means, the only way to guess at the future is by examining the present in light of the past.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Where To?, reprinted in updated form in Expanded Universe, pg 314
Our National loss of nerve, our escalating anti-intellectualism, our almost total disinterest in anything that does not directly and immediately profit us, the shambles of public education throughout most of our nation [...] cause me to predict that our space program will continue to dwindle. It would not surprise me (but would distress me mightily!) to see the Space Shuttle cancelled.
In the meantime some other nation or group will start exploiting space -- industry, power, perhaps Langrange-point colonies -- and suddenly we will wake up to the fact that we have been left at the post. That happened to us in '57; we came up from behind and passed the competition. Possibly we will do it again. Possibly --
But I am making no cash bets.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Where To?, reprinted in updated form in Expanded Universe, pg 325/326
The most difficult speculation for a science fiction writer to undertake is to imagine correctly the secondary implications of a new factor. Many people correctly anticipated the coming of the horseless carriage; some were bold enough to predict that everyone would use them and the horse would virtually disappear. But I know of no writer, fiction or non-fiction, who saw ahead of time the vast change in the courting and mating habits of Americans which would result primarily from the
automobile -- a change which the diaphragm and the oral contraceptive merely confirmed.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Where To?, reprinted in updated form in Expanded Universe, pg 326
There is some new gadget in existence today which will prove to be equally revolutionary in some other way equally unexpected. You and I both know of this gadget, by name and by function -- but we don't know which one it is or what its unexpected effect will be. This is why science fiction is not prophecy -- and why fictional speculation can be so much fun both to read and to write.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Where To?, reprinted in updated form in Expanded Universe, pg 327
[This
was part of the 1965 update to the 1950 original. In the 1980 update Heinlein allowed as to how it might be the computer chip. --MN]
The sexual revolution: it continues apace -- FemLib, GayLib, single women with progeny and never a lifted eyebrow, staid old universities and colleges that permit unmarried couples to room together on campus, group marriages, "open" marriages, miles and miles of "liberated" beaches. Most of this can be covered by one sentence: What used to be concealed is now done openly. But sexual attitudes are in flux; the new ones not yet cultural mores.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Where To?,
reprinted in updated form in Expanded Universe, pg 327
[In the 1980 update. --MN]
The racial biological function of "family" is the protection of children and pregnant women. To accomplish that, family organization must be rewarding to men as well . . . and I do not mean copulation. There is a cynical old adage covering that: "Why keep a cow when milk is so cheap?" A marriage must offer its members emotional, spiritual, and physical comforts superior to those to be found living alone if the prime function is to be accomplished.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Where
To?, reprinted in updated form in Expanded Universe, pg 327
[In the 1980 update. --MN]
The American core family [...] has ceased to be emotionally satisfying -- if it ever was. It is a creation of our times: mobility, birth control, easy divorce. Early in this century the core family was mother, father, four to eight children . . . and was itself a unit in an extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins living near enough (if not in the same house) to be mutually supportive. If a child was ill, Aunt Cora came over to help while Aunt Abby took the other kids into
her her home. See Mauve Decade fiction.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Where To?, reprinted in updated form in Expanded Universe, pg 327/328
[In the 1980 update. As to a reference, I refer the reader to: To Kill A Mockingbird --MN]
I do not know of any professional military man who favored ever getting into combat on the continent of Asia; such war for us is a logistical and strategic disaster.
But to break a commitment to an ally once it has been made is to destroy our credibility.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Where To?, reprinted in updated form in Expanded Universe, pg 330
[In the 1980 update. --MN]
Negative data win no prizes but they are the bedrock of science.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Where To?, reprinted in updated form in Expanded Universe, pg 337/338
[In the 1980 update. --MN]
There has been so much fiction and serious, able nonfiction published on how to terraform Mars that I shan't add to it, save to note on thing: Power is no problem. Sunshine at that distance has dropped off to about .43% of the maximum here -- but Mars gets all of it and gets it all day long save for infrequent dust storms . . . whereas the most that Philadelphia (and like places) ever gets is .35% -- and overcast days are common. Mars won't need solar power from orbit; it will
be easier to do it on the ground.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Where To?, reprinted in updated form in Expanded Universe, pg 340
[In the 1980 update. --MN]
But our currency has been going through a long steady inflation, and no nation in history has ever gone as far as we have along this route without reaching the explosive phase of inflation. Ten-dollar hamburgers? Brother, we are headed for the hundred-dollar hamburger -- for the barter-only hamburger.
But this is only an inconvenience rather than a disaster as long as there is plenty of hamburger.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Where To?, reprinted in updated form in Expanded Universe, pg 340
[In the 1965 update. --MN]
The editor who disliked science fiction (and me), but liked my sales grumbled to me, on my delivering my annual boys' novel, that she did wish that someone would write girls' stories. I answered, "Very well. I'll write a story for girls. When do you want it?"
She was simultaneously astonished, offended, and amused at the ridiculous notion that a mere man could write stories for girls. So that's how Puddin' was born: I started writing first-person-female-adolescent stories -- but not for that old harridan.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 354
[That old harridan was, of course, Alice Dalgliesh. One of those stories is in Expanded Universe, two of them are reprinted in Requiem: New Collected Works, etc. --MN]
As for sex, each generation thinks it invented sex; each generation is totally mistaken. Anything along that line today was commonplace both in Pompeii and in Victorian England; the differences lie only in the degree of cover up -- if any.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 355
Sour grapes is just as common among astronomers as it is in school yards.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe, pg 369
On the high seas or in space it is not distance that counts but time.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe, pg 371
One of the very few advantages of growing old is that one can reach an age at which he can do as he damn well pleases within the limits of his purse.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 372
If a science-fiction writer can't write, let him go back to being a fry cook or whatever he was doing before he gave up honest work.
--Robert Anson Heinlein Ray Guns and Rocket Ships, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 375
[For a definition of "honest work" see Expanded Universe (story Foreword), 92. --MN]
Granted that not all stories need be morally edifying, nevertheless I would demand of science-fiction writers as much exercise of moral sense as I would of other writers. I have in mind one immensely popular series which does not hold my interest very well because the protagonist seems to be guided only by expediency. Neither the writer nor his puppet seems to be aware of good and evil. For my taste this is a defect in the story, nor is the defect mitigated by the wonderful and gaudy
trappings of science fiction. In my opinion, such abstractions as honor, loyalty, fortitude, self-sacrifice, bravery, honesty, and integrity will be as important in the far reaches of the Galaxy as they are in Iowa or Korea.
--Robert Anson Heinlein Ray Guns and Rocket Ships, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 375/376
I believe that you are entitled to apply your own evaluating standards to science fiction quite as rigorously as you apply them in other fiction.
--Robert Anson Heinlein Ray Guns and Rocket Ships, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 376
Writers talking about writing are as bad as parents boasting about their children.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 378
[A sentiment with which I concur from experience. From the position of talker, not listener. --MN]
In PANDORA'S BOX I was trying hard to extrapolate rationally to most probable answers 50 years in the future (and in November 1979 I gave myself a score of 66% -- anybody want to buy a used crystal ball with a crack in it?).
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 379
[...] A man who can read and write is nine tenths free even in chains.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Third Millennium Opens, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 381
Man can be chained but he cannot be domesticated, and eventually he always breaks his chains.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Third Millennium Opens, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 382
. . .
[To] Encounter races equal or superior to ourselves. This would should be the most significant happening to mankind since the discovery of fire. It may degrade or destroy us, it may improve us; it cannot leave us unchanged.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Third Millennium Opens, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 383
I thank whatever gods there be that I went to school so many years ago that I had no choice but to be tightly disciplined in classes in which the teachers did not hesitate to fail and to punish.
My first grade class had 63 kids in it, one teacher, no assistant. Before the end of the second semester all 63 could read.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Third Millennium Opens, in the update footnotes, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 383
I decided many years back that I was too busy with this life to fret about what happens afterwards.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Third Millennium Opens, in the update footnotes reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 383
This polemic was first published on Saturday 12 April 1958. Thereafter it was printed many other places and reprints of it were widely circulated inside and outside the science fiction community, inside and outside this country.
It brought down on me the strongest and most emotional adverse criticism I have ever experience -- not to my surprise.
After more than twenty years my "misdeed" seems to have been largely forgotten, or perhaps forgiven. But I do not ask to be forgiven and I do not want it to be forgotten.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 386
["This polemic" is Who Are The Heirs Of Patrick Henry? Stand Up And Be Counted. Robert interrupted work on SIASL to launch a campaign for a stronger anti-Soviet stance; to counter the drive by pantywaists who wanted to cave in to Soviet
demands of concessions that would give the Soviets a serious strategic advantage in the arms race. The campaign lasted several weeks, and afterward Robert launched right into writing Starship Troopers. --MN]
Any rational person may well disagree with me on details of this broadside. But on the moral principle expressed here, a free man says: "Give me liberty or give me death!" No quibbling, no stopping to "think it over." He means it.
Fools and poltroons do not.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 387
The "Patrick Henry" ad shocked 'em. STARSHIP TROOPERS outraged 'em. I still can't see how that book got a Hugo. It continues to get lots of nasty "fan" mail and not much favorable fan mail . . . but it sells and sells and sells and sells, in eleven languages. It doesn't slow down -- four new contracts just this year [1979]. And yet I almost never hear of it save when someone wants to chew me out over it. I don't understand it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story
Afterword), pg 396
[...] the P.B.I., the Poor Bloody Infantry, the mudfoot who places his frail body between his loved home and the war's desolation -- but is rarely appreciated. "It's Tommy this and Tommy that and chuck him out, the brute! -- but it's 'thin red line of heroes when the guns begin to shoot.'"
My own service usually doesn't have too bad a time of it. Save for very special situations such as the rivers in Nam, a Navy man can get killed but he is unlikely to be wounded . . . and if he is killed, it is with hot food in his belly, clean clothes on his body, a recent hot bath, and sack time in a comfortable bunk not more that 24 hours earlier. The Air Force leads a comparable life. But think of Korea, of Gaudalcanal, of Belleau Wood, of Viet Nam. The H-bomb did not abolish the
infantryman; it made him essential . . . and he has the toughest job of all and should be honored.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Afterword), pg 398
I think I know what offends most of my critics the most about STARSHIP TROOPERS: It is the dismaying idea that a voice in governing the state should be earned instead of being handed to anyone who is 18 years old and has body temperature near 37C.
But there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Afterword), pg 399
Brethren and Sistern, have you ever stopped to think that there has not been one rational decision out of the Oval Office for fifty years?
An all female government could not possibly be worse than what we have been enduring. Let's try it!
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Afterword), pg 399
[That would make it since 1929. As to whether or not there have been any rational decisions since then, I am in no position to judge. They weren't my governments. Still, I can't think of any off hand. --MN]
We may never know the exact truth of what happened to that U-2. Only Soviet officials talked to the unlucky pilot Powers before his trial.
But the nervous nellies among us should stop beating their breasts over the shame of it all.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, "PRAVDA" means "TRUTH, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 406
Photo reconnaissance is not the same thing as a bombing run.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, "PRAVDA" means "TRUTH, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 406
That we have been conducting photo reconnaissance over the Soviet Union so successfully and for four vital years is the most encouraging news in the past decade. Among other things it means we have accurate maps by which to strike back. The Soviet Union does not have to send spy planes over us to obtain similar information. Excellent large scale maps with our military installations and industrial complexes clearly marked may be obtained free from Standard Oil or Conoco. Still better maps may be ordered by the Soviet Embassy from our Coast and Geodetic Survey at very low prices. Soviet agents move freely among us and many of them enjoy the immunity and complete freedom of travel afforded by U.N. passports. If a Red spy wants aerial color photographs at low altitude of our Air Defense installation just south of Kansas City -- in America's heartland -- until recently he could hire a pilot and a plane [...] and snap pictures to his heart's content without taking any of the risks of being hanged or shot down that Francis Powers took for us. If Mr. Eisenhower had failed to obtain by any possible means the military intelligence that the U.S.S.R. gets so easily and cheaply about us, he would have been derelict in his duty.
So, if you hear anyone whining about how "shameful" the U-2 flights were, take his lollipop away and spank him with it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, "PRAVDA" means "TRUTH, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 406/407
Truth, to the West, consist of all the facts without distortion.
Pravda is that which serves the World Communist Revolution. Pravda can be a mixture of fact and falsehood, or a flat-footed, brassbound, outright lie. In rare cases and by sheer coincidence, pravda may happen to match the facts. I do not actually know of any such a case but it seems statistically likely that such matching must have taken place a few times in the past 43 years.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, "PRAVDA" means "TRUTH, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 408
By the doctrines of dialectical materialism, simple truth as we know it is abolished as concept. It can have no existence of its own separate from the needs and purposes of the World Revolution. Our ingrained habit of believing that the other fellow must be telling the truth at least most of the time is perhaps our greatest weakness in dealing with the Kremlin.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, "PRAVDA" means "TRUTH, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 408
Communism has no concern for the individual. The Soviets have liquidated some 20 to 30 millions of their own in "building socialism." They kept after Trotsky until they got him. They murdered a schoolmate of mine between stations on a train in Western Europe and dumped his body. Terror and death are as fixed a part of their tactics as is distortion of the truth. Their present gang boss is the "liberator" of Budapest, the "pacifier" of the Ukraine -- a comic butcher personally responsible for
the deaths of millions of innocent people.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, "PRAVDA" means "TRUTH, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 410
How can the attitudes of 200 million people be switched on and off like a light bulb? How can one set of facts be made to produce three widely differing pravdas? By complete control of all communications from the cradle to the grave.
Almost all Soviet women work. Their babies are placed in kindergartens at an average age of 57 days, so we were told, and what we saw supported the allegation. We visited several kindergartens, on collective farms and in factories. By the posted schedules, these babies spent 13 1/2 hours each day in kindergarten -- they are with their mothers for perhaps an hour before bedtime.
At the Forty-Years-Of-October Collective Farm, outside Alma Ata, some of the older children in one of the kindergartens put on a little show for us. One little girl recited a poem. A little boy gave a prose recitation. The entire group sang. The children were clean and neat, healthy and happy. Our guide translated nothing so, superficially, it was the sort of beguiling performance one sees any day in any American kindergarten.
However, my wife understands Russian.
The poem recounted the life of Lenin.
The prose recitation concerned the Seven-Year Plan.
The group singing was about the how "we must protect our revolution."
These tots were no older than six.
That is how it is done. Starting at the cradle, never let them hear anything but the official version. Thus, "pravda" becomes "truth" to the Russian children.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, "PRAVDA" means "TRUTH, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 413/414
Concerning unpersons --
Rasputin is a fairly well known name in America. I was unable to find anyone in Russia who would admit to having heard of him. He's an unperson.
John Paul Jones is known to every school child in America. After the American Revolution Catherine the Great called him to Russia where he served as an Admiral and helped to found the Russian Navy, negligible up to that time. I tried many, many times to find a picture of him in Russian historical museums and I asked dozens of educated Russians about him -- with no results. In Russian history, John Paul Jones has become an unperson.
Trotsky and Kerensky are not unperson yet. Too many persons are still alive who recall their leading roles in recent Russian history. But they will someday be unpersons, even though Dr. Kerensky is living today in California.
[year?] If pinned down, a Soviet guide may admit that there was such a person as Kerensky, then change the subject. The same applies to Trotsky; his role, for good or bad, is being erased from the records. We saw literally thousands of pictures of Lenin, including
several hundred group pictures which supposed portrayed all the communist VIP's at the time of the Revolution. Not one of these pictures shows Trotsky even though many of them were alleged to be news photos taken at the time when Lenin and Trotsky were still partners and buddies.
This is how unpersons are made. This is how pravda is created.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, "PRAVDA" means "TRUTH, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 416/417
To enjoy a thing requires that it be approached in the proper mood. [...] To experience the Soviet Union without first getting in the mood for it is too much like parachute jumping when the chute fails to open. The proper mood for the Soviet Union is that of the man who hit himself on the head with a hammer because it felt so good when he stopped.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Inside Intourist, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 421
You can avoid the worst shocks to your nervous system by knowing an advance that you are not going to get what you paid for; then you can soothe the residual nerve jangling with your favorite pacifier. I used small quantities of vodka -- "small" by Russian standards, as Russians also use it to insulate themselves from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but they dose to unconsciousness. Drunks, passed out in public places, are more truly symbolic of the USSR than is the Hammer &
Sickle.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Inside Intourist, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 421/422
In a bully boy society often nothing but bullying will work.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Inside Intourist, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 431
After twenty years it would seem logical for me to return to the USSR to see what improvements, if any, they have made in handling tourism. I could plead age and health, but I shan't -- one trip to USSR is educational; twice is masochism.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Afterword), pg 439
Two things we have done consistently throughout the world: 1) see the slums; 2) evaluate the diet.
The fancy hotels and the museums and the parks are much the same the world over -- but the slums are honest criteria even though a traveller can't assign a numerical value. The street people of Bombay and Calcutta tell far more about India than does the glorious Taj Mahal.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Afterword), pg 440
[Cf notes on slum viewing in material from Tramp Royale. The above was written twenty-four years earlier and with less explication. --MN]
I have one very wild theory. Our State Department may see no advantage in calling them liars on this point. Through several administrations we have been extremely careful not to hurt their feelings. I think this is a mistake . . . but I am neither president nor secretary of state; my opinion is not important and may be wrong.
("'But the Emperor is not wearing any clothes,' said the child.")
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Afterword), pg 445
In this complex world, science, the scientific method, and the consequences of the scientific method are central to everything the human race is doing and to wherever we are going. If we blow ourselves up we will do it by misapplication of science. Science fiction is the only form of fiction which takes into account this central force in our lives and futures. Other sorts of fiction, if they notice science at all, simply deplore it -- an attitude very chichi in the anti-intellectual
atmosphere of today. But we will never get out of the mess we are in by wringing our hands.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Pragmatics Of Patriotism, From his James Forrestal Memorial Lecture, 05 Apr 1973, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 459
But why would anyone want to become a naval officer?
In the present dismal state of our culture there is little prestige attached to serving your country; recent public opinion polls place military service far down the list.
It can't be the pay. No one gets rich on Navy pay. Even a 4-star admiral is paid much less than top executives in other lines. As for lower ranks the typical naval officer finds himself throughout his career just catching up from the unexpected expenses connected with the last change of duty when another change duty causes a new financial crisis. Then, when he is about fifty, he is passed over and retires...but he can't really retire because he has two kids in college and one still to go. So he has to find a job...and discovers that jobs for men his age are scarce and usually don't pay well.
Working conditions? You'll spend half your life away from your family. Your working hours? "Six days shalt thou work and do all thou art able; the seventh the same and pound on the cable." A forty hour week is standard for civilians -- but not for naval officers. You'll work that forty-hour week but that's just a starter. You'll stand a night watch as well, and duty weekends. Then with every increase in grade your hours get longer -- until at last you'll get a ship of your own and no longer stand watches. Instead you are duty twenty-four hours a day . . . and you'll sign your night order book with: "In case of doubt do not hesitate to call me."
I don't know the average week's worth for naval officer but it is closer to sixty than to forty. I'm speaking of peacetime, of course. Under war conditions it is whatever hours are necessary -- and sleep you grab when you can.
Why would anyone elect a career which is unappreciated, overworked? It can't be just to wear a pretty uniform. There has to be a better reason.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Pragmatics Of Patriotism, From his James Forrestal Memorial Lecture, 05 April 1973, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 461/462
Today, in the United States, it popular among self-styled "intellectuals" to sneer at patriotism. They seem to think that it is axiomatic that any civilized man is a pacifist, and they treat the military profession with contempt. "Warmongers" -- "Imperialists" -- "Hired killers in uniform" -- you have all heard such sneers and you will hear them again. One of their favorite quotations is: "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."
What they never mention is that the man who made that sneering wisecrack was a fat, gluttonous slob who was pursued all his life by a pathological fear of death.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Pragmatics Of Patriotism, From his James Forrestal Memorial Lecture, 05 April 1973, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 462
But patriotism is not sentimental nonsense. Nor something dreamed up by demagogues. Patriotism is as necessary a part of man's evolutionary equipment as are his eyes, as useful to the race as eyes are to the individual.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Pragmatics Of Patriotism, From his James Forrestal Memorial Lecture, 05 April 1973, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 462
Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards. Every baboon generation has to pass this examination in moral behaviour; those who bilge it don't have progeny. Perhaps the old bull of the tribe gives lessons . . . but it is the leopard who decides who graduates -- and there is no appeal from his decision.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Pragmatics Of Patriotism, From his James Forrestal Memorial Lecture,
05 April 1973, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 465
The seeds of war are everywhere; the conflicts of interest are real and deep, and will not be abolished by pious platitudes.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Pragmatics Of Patriotism, From his James Forrestal Memorial Lecture, 05 April 1973, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 466
Patriotism -- moral behavior at the national level. [...]
Patriotism -- An abstract word used to describe a type of behavior as harshly practical as good brakes and good tires. It means that you place the welfare of your nation ahead of your own even if it costs you your life.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Pragmatics Of Patriotism, From his James Forrestal Memorial Lecture, 05 April 1973, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 467
. . . I am very proud of every one of our women in uniform; they are a shining example to us all.
Nevertheless, as a mathematical proposition in the facts of biology, children, and women of child-bearing age, are the ultimate treasure that we must save. Every human culture is based on "Women and children first" -- and any attempt to do it any other way leads quickly to extinction.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Pragmatics Of Patriotism, From his James Forrestal Memorial Lecture, 05 April 1973, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 468
Possibly extinction is the way we are headed. Great nations have died in the past; it could happen to us.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Pragmatics Of Patriotism, From his James Forrestal Memorial Lecture, 05 April 1973, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 468
Possibly I am misled by the offensive behavior of a noisy but ineffective minority. But it does seem to me that patriotism has lost its grip on a large percentage of our people.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Pragmatics Of Patriotism, From his James Forrestal Memorial Lecture, 05 April 1973, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 468
Edward Elmer [E.E. "Doc"] Smith was born in 1890, some forty years before the American language started to fall to pieces -- long, long before the idiot notion of "restricted vocabulary" infected our schools, a half century before our language was corrupted by the fallacy that popular usage defines grammatical correctness.
In consequence, Dr. Smith made full use of his huge vocabulary, preferring always the exact word over a more common but inexact word. He did not hesitate to use complex sentences. His syntactical constructions show that he understood and used with precision the conditional and the subjunctive modes as well as the indicative. He did not split infinitives. The difference between "like" and "as" was not a mystery to him. He limited barbarisms to quoted dialog used in characterization.
(Oh, but that dialog!) In each story Doc's male lead character is a very intelligent, highly educated, cheerful, emotional, enthusiastic, and genuinely modest man who talks exactly like Doc Smith who was a very intelligent, highly educated, cheerful, emotional, enthusiastic, and genuinely modest man.
conversation Doc used a number of cliches . . . and his male lead characters used the same or similar ones. This is a literary fault? I think not. In casual speech most people tend to repeat each his own idiosyncratic pattern of cliches. Doc's repertory of cliches was quite colorful, especially so when compared with patterns heard today that draw heavily on "The Seven Words That Must Never Be Used in Television." A 7-word vocabulary offers little variety.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Larger Than Life: A Memoir to E.E. "Doc" Smith, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 497
(see Tunnel In The Sky, 33, and "bonehead English," To Sail Beyond The Sunset, 368)
[Also, while Robert himself was a product of a time when an education stressed the three R's, he himself frequently misused "may" for "might" in both his personal and professional writing. I can't for the life
of me figure out why or how it escaped him; which makes me worry about what popular misusage I pepper my work with. Even though I have sensitized myself to popular misusage. --MN]
But all the complaints about "Skylark" Smith's allegedly literary faults are as nothing to the (usually unvoiced) major grievance:
Doc Smith did not go along with any of the hogwash that passes for a system of social values today.
He believed in Good and Evil. He had no truck with the moral relativism of the neo- (cocktail party) Freudians.
He refused to concede that "mediocre" is better than superiour.
He had no patience with self-pity.
He did not think that men and women are equal -- he would as lief have equated oranges with apples. His stories assumed that men and women are different, with different functions, different responsibilities, different duties. Not equal but complementary. Neither complete without the other.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Larger Than Life: A Memoir to E.E. "Doc" Smith, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 497
Indeed, a happy New Year beginning the 11th year in the Age of Space, greatest era of our race -- the greatest! -- despite gasoline shortages, pollution, overpopulation, inflation, wars and threats of wars. 'These too shall pass' -- but the stars abide.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Spinoff, a transcript of his congressional testimony, 19 July 1979, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 502
[continued to quote below]
Our race will spread out through space -- unlimited room, unlimited energy, unlimited wealth. This is certain.
But I am not certain that the working language will be English. The people of the United States seem to have lost their nerve.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Spinoff, a transcript of his congressional testimony, 19 July 1979, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 502
In all scientific research, the researcher may or may not find what he is looking for -- indeed, his hypothesis may be demolished -- but he is certain to learn something new . . . which may be and often is more important that what he hoped to learn.
This is the Principle of Serendipity. It is so invariant that it can be considered and empirically established natural law.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Spinoff, a transcript of his congressional testimony, 19 July 1979, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 502
The most ironical thing about our space program is that there are thousands of people alive today who would be dead were it not form some item derived from space research -- but are blissfully unaware of the fact -- and complain about 'wasting all that money on stupid, useless, space stunts when we have so many really important problems to solve right here on Earth.'
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Spinoff, a transcript of his congressional testimony, 19 July 1979, reprinted in Expanded
Universe, pg 504
Am I handicapped? Yes, but my handicaps do not interfere with my work -- or my joy in life. Over forty years ago the Navy handed me a piece of paper that pronounced me totally and permanently disabled. I never believed it. That piece of paper wore out; I did not.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Spinoff, a transcript of his congressional testimony, 19 July 1979, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 506
Was it worthwhile? Yes, even if I had died at one of the four critical points -- because sinking into senility while one is still bright enough to realize that one's mental powers are steadily failing is a miserable, no good way to live.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Spinoff, a transcript of his congressional testimony, 19 July 1979, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 510
-- I have long been convinced that life long learning helps to keep one young and happy.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Spinoff, a transcript of his congressional testimony, 19 July 1979, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 510
Foolishness? Everyone in this room is old enough to know by direct experience that today's foolishness is tomorrow's wisdom. I can remember when 'Get a horse!' was considered the height of wit. As may be, anything that gives one a strong incentive to live can't be entirely foolish.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Spinoff, a transcript of his congressional testimony, 19 July 1979, reprinted in Expanded Universe, pg 511
NASA has two remarkable records: first, a space program far more successful than anyone had dared hope; and, second, the most incredibly bumbling, stupid, inept public relations of any government agency.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Afterword), pg 513
One would think that a "prophet" unable to score higher than 66% after 30 years have elapsed on 50-year predictions would have the humility (or the caution) to refrain from repeating his folly. But I've never been very humble, and the motto of my prime vocation has always been, "L'audace! Toujours l'audace!"
--Robert Anson Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Foreword), pg 514
-- There are increasing pathological trends in our culture that show us headed down the chute to self-destruction. These trends do not require that we be conquered -- wait a bit and we will fall into the lap of whichever power cares to occupy us.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 519
. . . The three legged stool of understanding is held up by *history*, *languages*, and *mathematics*. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 519
Age is not an accomplishment and youth is no sin.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 520
A person who knows only his own language does not even know his own language; epistemology necessitates knowing more than one human language.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 522
A subject called "science" that does not require difficult mathematics usually is "science" in the sense that "Christian Science" is science -- in its widest sense "science" simply means "knowledge" and anyone may use the word for any subject . . . but shun the subjects that can't be understood without mind-stretching math.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 526
Sturgeon's Law applies to professors as well as to other categories.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 526
Philosophy? Easy and lots of fun and absolutely guaranteed not to teach you anything while loosening up your mind. In more than twenty-five centuries of effort not one basic problem of philosophy has ever been solved . . . but the efforts to solve them are most amusing.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 531
Have you noticed that professors of English and/or American Literature are not expected to be proficient in the art they profess to teach? Medicine is taught by M.D.s on living patients, civil engineering is taught by men who in fact have built bridges that did not fall; law is taught by lawyers; music is taught by musicians; mathematics is taught by mathematicians -- and so on.
But is -- for example -- the American Novel taught by American Novelists?
Yes. Occasionally. But so seldom that the exceptions stand out. [...]
There is of course, a reason for this nonsense. The rewards to a competent novelist are so much greater than the salaries of professors of English at even our top schools that once he/she learns this racket, teaching holds no charm.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 531/532
We remain strong in science and engineering but even students in those subject are handicapped by failure of our primary and secondary schools and by cutback in funding of research both public and private. Our great decline in education is alone enough to destroy this country . . . but I offer no solutions because the only solutions I think would work are so drastic as to be incredible.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 535
. . . the most expensive thing in the world is a second best military establishment . . .
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 538
. . . (an outfit without esprit de corps is not an army unit; it is an armed mob -R.A.H.).
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 539
Reinstating the draft would not get us out of trouble, even with the changes Dr. Gabriel suggests to make the draft "fair." [...]
A lottery, even meticulously fair, cannot make a man willing to charge a machine-gun nest in the face of almost certain death. That sort of drive comes from emotional sources. Esprit de corps and patriotism cannot be drawn in a lottery.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 540
After two centuries, "Not worth a continental," still means "worthless." Memory is long for the damage done by inflation.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 541
There are Makers, Takers, and Fakers, no fourth category, and today the Takers and the Fakers outnumber (and outvote) the Makers.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 544
Every congressman, every senator, knows precisely what causes inflation . . but can't (won't) support the drastic reforms to stop it because it could (and probably would) cost him his job. I have no solution and only one piece of advice:
Buy a wheelbarrow.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 544
[The wheelbarrow was to be needed for carrying more paper money than one could lift; as happened with the Deutchmark during the winter of '23-'24. Heinlein paid a nickel for a five billion DM note back then, and paid four cents too much. In this day of debit cards and credit cards, it will no longer be necessary to use a wheelbarrow. --MN]
Having been reared in the most bigoted of Bible Belt fundamentalism in which every word of the King James version of the Bible is the literal word of God -- then having broken loose at thirteen when I first laid hands on THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES and THE DESCENT OF MAN -- I should have been unsurprised by the anti-intellectualism and anti-science ground swell in this country.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 545
I had read much about the Ku Klux Klan during the Tragic Era, talked with many who had experienced it, then experienced its nationwide recrudescence in the early 1920's. I had seen damfoolishness from dance marathons to flagpole sitters, and had made considerable study of crowd behavior and mass delusions. I had noted, rather casually, the initial slow growth of anti-science-&-intellect-ism.
Yet the durned thing shocked me.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 545
The mindless yahoos, people who think linearly like a savage instead of inductively or deductively, and people who used to be respectful to learned opinion or at least kept quiet, now are aggressively on the attack. Facts and logic don't count; their intuition is the source of "truth."
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 546
The growing realization that human bodies are not obscene is a sane, healthy, counter trend in our crazy culture.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 547
If all of us tried to go back-to-nature, most of us would starve rather quickly. These back-to-nature freaks can't do arithmetic.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 547
Baseline: fifty-odd years ago [circa 1930] astrology was commonly regarded as a ridiculous former superstition, one all but a tiny minority had outgrown. It is now the orthodoxy of many, possibly a majority. This pathological change parallels the decay of public education.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 547
There is an unnumbered throng of religions, each with its creation myth -- all different. Shall one of them be taught as having the status of a scientific hypothesis merely because the members of the religion subscribing to it can drum up majority at the polls, or organize pressure group at a state capital? This is tyranny by the mob inflicted on minorities in defiance of the Bill of Rights.
Revelation has no place in a science textbook; it belongs under religious studies. Cosmogony is the most difficult and least satisfactory branch of astronomy; cosmologists would be the first to agree. But, damn it; they're trying! -- on the evidence as it becomes available, by logical methodology, and their hypotheses are constantly subjected to pitiless criticism by their informed equals.
They should not have to surrender time on their platform, space in their textbooks, to purveyors of ancient myths supported only by a claim of "divine revelation."
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 550
Unexpected events always cause unexpected expense. . .
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 554
[Concerning the national debt, but applicable to all situations. --MN]
In case of war, all bets are off.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 554
One chink in the armor of any democracy is that, when the Plebs discover that they can vote themselves Bread & Circuses, they usually do . . . right up to the day there is neither bread nor circuses. At that point they often start lynching the senators, congressmen, bankers, tax collectors, Jews, grocers, foreigners, any minority -- take your choice. For they know that they didn't do it. The citizen is sovereign until it comes to accepting blame for his sovereign acts -- then he
demands a scapegoat.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 555
The fact that a debt is amortized over the years doesn't stop it from being a debt.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 555/556
. . . and there's an election coming up. (There's always an election coming up.)
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 556
I don't understand a trillion dollars any better than I do a trillion seconds. I simply know that we had better stop spending money we don't have if we want to avoid that Man on Horseback.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 557
Bill Gresham was right but he told only half of it: you not only don't get rich peddling gloom; it isn't any fun.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 558
. . . there never has been anything incurably wrong with our country and our world -- just a horrid accumulation of silly mistakes that could be corrected with horse sense and the will to do it.
--Robert Anson Heinlein, The Happy Days Ahead, Expanded Universe, pg 581
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
--attrib. Robert A. Heinlein
[Possibly paraphrasing a quotation by Richard Colin Campbell in Cat Who Walks Through Walls, 368]
Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing - with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for the second and third place.
--Robert A. Heinlein
Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
--attrib. Robert Heinlein
[To my ear, this sounds more like something Lazarus Long would have said. --MN]
Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
--Robert A Heinlein
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